Poor responses to tyrosine kinase inhibitors in a child with precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with SNX2-ABL1 chimeric transcript

In addition to BCR, various rare fusion partners for the ABL1 gene have been reported in leukemia. We have identified the fusion gene SNX2-ABL1 in a pediatric case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which has only once previously been reported in an adult patient. Cytogenetic analysis detected this fusion gene arising from a t(5;9)(q22;q34) translocation. ALL cells carrying a SNX2-ABL1 fusion exhibited a BCR-ABL1+ALL-like gene expression profile. The patient poorly responded to dasatinib but partially responded to imatinib. Treatment using tyrosine kinase inhibitors requires further investigation to optimize the genotype-based treatment stratification for patients with SNX2-ABL1 fusion.