Genome-Wide Mutational Landscape of Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

[Background] Mixed lineage leukemia (MLLalso called KMT2A) rearrangement-positive leukemia is one of the most aggressive types of leukemia. It is diagnosed predominantly in infants and typically shows a multi-lineage phenotype. Since current chemotherapy fails in more than 50% of infantile acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with MLL-rearrangement, a better understanding of biological features of the disease is important in order to develop more specific and successful treatment strategies. Despite the evident biological and clinical significance of MLL-rearrangement, it has also been shown in vitro and in vivo that MLL-rearrangement is not sufficient to induce full leukemic transformation, indicating additional hits are required for complete leukemogenesis.