Etoposide and illegitimate DNA double-strand break repair in the generation of MLL translocations: new insights and new questions

Faithful repair of chromosomal double-strand breaks (DSBs) is central to genome integrity and the suppression of genome rearrangements including translocations that are a hallmark of leukemia, lymphoma, and soft-tissue sarcomas B. Elliott, M. Jasin, Double-strand breaks and translocations in cancer, Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 59 (2002) 373-385; D.C. van Gent, J.H. Hoeijmakers, R. Kanaar, Chromosomal stability and the DNA double-stranded break connection, Nat. Rev. Genet. 2 (2001) 196-206]. Chemotherapy agents that target the essential cellular enzyme topoisomerase II (topo II) are known promoters of DSBs and are associated with therapy-related leukemias. There is a clear clinical association between previous exposure to etoposide and therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML) characterized by chromosomal rearrangements involving the mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) gene on chromosome band 11q23 C.A. Felix, Leukemias related to treatment with DNA topoisomerase II inhibitors, Med. Pediatr. Oncol. 36 (2001) 525-535]. Most MLL rearrangements initiate within a well-characterized 8.3 kb region that contains both putative topo II cleavage recognition sequences and repetitive elements leading to the logical hypothesis that MLL is particularly susceptible to aberrant cleavage and homology-mediated fusion to repetitive elements located on novel chromosome partners. In this review, we will discuss the findings and implications of recent attempts to confirm this hypothesis.