TITLE: Transcription-controlled gene therapy against tumor angiogenesis

AUTHOR CONTACT:
Dror Harats
Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
Phone: 972-3-530-2940
Fax: 972-3-534-3521
E-mail: dharats@post.tau.ac.il

View the PDF of this article at: https://www.the-jci.org/press/20007.pdf

Possibilities from the Impossible in Leukemia Patients

The chance finding of a common rearrangement in the variable region of an immunoglobin (Ig) receptor in different individuals is staggeringly unlikely: Ig genes can potentially create over 3.4 million functional rearrangements. Improbable is apparently not impossible, as Nicholas Chiorazzi and colleagues, of the North Shore-LIJ Research Institute, have recently identified remarkably similar B-cell antigen receptors among a group of individuals suffering from B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL). While B-CLL is the most common of the leukemias found in the Western hemisphere, little is known about what causes the normal B cell in these individuals to undergo leukemic transformation. The unexpected finding of similar Ig rearrangement in the B-cell antigen receptors from this group of patients suggests that some form of selection played a role here, and may therefore provide the first insight into the underlying molecular mechanisms at play in this deadly disease.

An accompanying commentary by J. Donald Capra and Grant Kolar of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, detail what is understood about B-CLL and discuss this unusual finding as it relates to this disease and other immunological disorders.

TITLE: Remarkably similar antigen receptors among a subset o
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Contact: Laurie Goodman
lgoodman@the-jci.org
212-342-4159
Journal of Clinical Investigation
2-Apr-2004