Comparison of human BCP-ALL MLL-r and normal CD19+CD10+ precursor B-cell transcriptomes

B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (pre-B ALL) with mixed-lineage leukemia gene rearrangement (MLL-r) is a poor-prognosis subtype for which additional therapeutic targets are needed. We evaluated the glycomes, transcriptomes and proteomes of the same samples using only about 10^6 cells for each assay. We found that the expression of many genes involved in glycosylation differ between MLL-r cells and normal controls: 61 of the 221 human glycosyltransferases were differentially expressed in MLL-r cells. The leukemia cell glycome and many proteins associated with glycan biosynthesis were also significantly changed compared to normal control precursor B-cells, indicating that the malignant phenotype of these cells could be regulated by such changes. Overall design: Four bone marrow samples from different donors depleted of CD34+ stem cells were used to isolate normal healthy precursor CD19+CD10+ B-cells. Red blood cells were removed from three leukemic pre-B ALL MLLr bone marrow samples before RNA isolation.