Cytogenomic Characterization of Double Minute Heterogeneity in Therapy Related Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Somatic perturbations such as translocation, mutation, deletion, gene amplification and epigenetic modification in proto-oncogenes and/or tumor suppressor genes may result in unscheduled expression of proto-oncogenes, or altered function of tumor suppressor genes, or cause gene overexpression in tumors. Gene amplification is a unique form of genomic instability in cancer genome and is often considered a biomarker for aggressive disease that is resistant to therapy. While low level amplification is represented by copy number gains (trisomy or tetrasomy), high level amplification may manifest morphologically as a homogeneously staining region (HSR) at a particular chromosome band (intra-chromosomal) or as small light staining paired chromatin structures called double minutes (dmin) scattered in the nucleoplasm [1].
Source: Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Tags: Case Report Source Type: research