The authors examined leukemia cells from 40 patients with B-CLL and compared them with lymphocytes from normal donors. They found that Lyn was markedly overexpressed in CLL cells and an unusual amount of the enzyme was found in the cell cytosol. In addition, the enzyme was constantly active compared with levels of activity in normal donor cells.
The authors went on to show that inhibition of Lyn was able to restore the process of cell apoptosis to normal and treatment of malignant cells with drugs that induce cell death decreased both Lyn expression levels and activity – suggesting a direct correlation between high Lyn activity and the ability of these B cells to resist apoptosis. The authors suggest that Lyn is involved in the development of B-CLL and that this enzyme therefore represents an attractive target for therapy.
The study will appear online on January 13 in advance of publication in the February 1 print edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
TITLE: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia B cells contain anomalous Lyn tyrosine kinase, a putative contribution to defective apoptosis.
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Livio Trentin
Università di Padova, Padova, Italy.
Phone: 011-39-049-821-2298; Fax: 011-39-049-875-4179; E-mail: livio.trentin@unipd.it .
This article is available at: http://www.jci.org/papbyrecent.shtml .
Journal of Clinical Investigation