Abstract
Adult T-cell leukemia-lymphoma (ATLL) is a group of T-cell malignancies caused by infection with human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I). Although the pathogenesis of ATLL remains incompletely understood, the viral regulatory protein Tax is centrally involved in cellular transformation. Here we describe the generation of HTLV-I Tax transgenic mice using the Lck proximal promoter to restrict transgene expression to developing thymocytes. After prolonged latency periods, transgenic mice developed diffuse large-cell lymphomas and leukemia with clinical, pathological and immunological features characteristic of acute ATLL. Transgenic mice were functionally immunocompromised and they developed opportunistic infections. Fulminant disease also developed rapidly in SCID mice after engraftment of lymphomatous cells from transgenic mice. Flow cytometry showed that the cells were CD4− and CD8−, but CD44+, CD25+ and cytoplasmic CD3+. This phenotype is indicative of a thymus-derived pre–T-cell phenotype, and disease development was associated with the constitutive activation of NF-κB. Our model accurately reproduces human disease and will provide a tool for analysis of the molecular events in transformation and for the development of new therapeutics.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Y. Sato and E. Tao for their technical assistance. We also thank O. Suzuki, T. Suzuki, M. Moriyama, K. Iwabuchi and Y. Misaki for advice. Y.O. is a Research Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. These studies were supported by the Japanese Foundation for AIDS Prevention, Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST), Ministry of Education and Culture, Japan and the National Virus Reference Laboratory, University College Dublin, Ireland.
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Supplementary Fig. 1
Transcription factor profiling in SCID splenic lymphomatous cells (SCID-L) nuclear extracts. (PDF 460 kb)
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Hasegawa, H., Sawa, H., Lewis, M. et al. Thymus-derived leukemia-lymphoma in mice transgenic for the Tax gene of human T-lymphotropic virus type I. Nat Med 12, 466–472 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1389
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1389
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