Expression data from xenografted human leukemia cells comparing leukemic cells engrafted in the central nervous system (CNS) to leukemic cells derived from bone marrow (BM)

CNS leukemia is still the major obstacle in treating childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We have used our NOD/SCID/huALL xenotransplantation model to identify molecular pathways leading to the infiltration of leukemic cells into the CNS compartment. We analysed gene expression differences of leukemic cells isolated from CNS and BM of CNS-positive samples using a microarray approach to detect expression differences between different infiltrated compartments. We xenotransplanted primary leukemic cells into NOD/SCID mice by tail vein injection. When moribund, mice were sacrificed and total RNA was prepared from human leukemia cells isolated from CNS and BM, which subsequently have been subjected to hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.