Akt is TCL-ish: implications for B-cell lymphoma

The TCL1 (T-cell leukemia 1) protooncogene is highly expressed in many human B-cell leukemias and two recent papers show that TCL1 overexpression causes rapid development of B-cell lymphomas in mice. Other recent work showing that the TCL1 protein enhances the activation of the pro-survival kinase Akt has revealed a potential mechanism underlying the development of B-cell leukemias and raised new questions about the regulation of Akt.