Defective expression of Bruton's tyrosine kinase in acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) is a cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase that serves an essential role in B cell signaling and development. We examined the BTK expression profile of primary leukemic cells from infants with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (N = 14) and from pediatric patients with newly diagnosed (N = 10) or relapsed (N = 5) B-lineage ALL. Analysis of BTK protein and mRNA expression in the infant patient cells (N = 14) showed variable levels of BTK expression with the majority of samples having reduced to absent BTK expression. Sequence analysis of reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) products of Btk mRNA from infant leukemia cells revealed the presence of aberrant transcripts. These Btk transcripts were characterized by either deletion of exon 16 (Delta16) alone or deletion of both exons 15 and 16 (Delta15 and 16). These deletions involve exact exon skipping and encode BTK proteins with either a deleted (Delta16), or truncated (Delta15 and 16) kinase domain. Extension of these Btk transcript sequencing studies to 15 pediatric B-lineage ALL patients revealed expression of exon 16 deleted Btk transcripts in several pediatric patients, however, none of these pediatric patients expressed transcripts with the exon 15 and 16 deletion. Both reduced expression of Btk message and expression of aberrant deleted Btk transcripts would contribute to reduced BTK protein expression and function in B-lineage leukemia cells. Since BTK is required for radiation induced apoptosis, reduced to absent expression of functional BTK in infant ALL cells could contribute to their radiation resistance.