Single cell transcriptional evolution of myeloid leukaemia of Down syndrome – WGS

Abstract: Children with Down syndrome have a 150-fold increased risk of developing myeloid leukaemia (ML-DS). Unusually for a childhood leukaemia, ML-DS arises from a preleukaemic state, termed transient abnormal myelopoiesis (TAM), and via a conserved sequence of mutations. Here, we examined the relationship between the genetic and transcriptional evolution of ML-DS from a rich collection of primary patient samples through single cell mRNA sequencing, complemented by phylogenetic analyses in progressive disease. We distilled the transcriptional consequence of each genetic step in the evolution of ML-DS, showing that TAM-defining GATA1 mutations account for most of the ML-DS transcriptome, including those of progressive disease. This transcriptional backbone may thus represent a common vulnerability in ML-DS. We extracted the transcriptional difference between TAM and ML-DS which, unexpectedly, reflected features shared across childhood leukaemia. Our approach delineates the transcriptional evolution of ML-DS and provides an analytical blueprint for distilling consequences of mutations directly from patient samples.

• 20/12/2024
• 1 sample
• DAC: EGAC00001000205
• Technology: Illumina NovaSeq 6000