Mutation of epigenetic regulators TET2 and MLL3 in patients with HTLV-I-induced acute adult T-cell leukemia

BACKGROUND: Epigenetic regulators play a critical role in the maintenance of specific chromatin domains in an active or repressed state. Disruption of epigenetic regulatory mechanisms is widespread in cancer cells and largely contributes to the transformation process through active repression of tumor suppressor genes. While mutations of epigenetic regulators have been reported in various lymphoid malignancies and solid cancers, mutation of these genes in HTLV-I-associated T-cell leukemia has not been investigated. METHOD: Here we used whole genome next generation sequencing (NGS) of uncultured freshly isolated ATL samples and identified the presence of mutations in SUZ12, DNMT1, DNMT3A, DNMT3B, TET1, TET2, IDH1, IDH2, MLL, MLL2, MLL3 and MLL4. RESULTS: TET2 was the most frequently mutated gene, occurring in 32 % (10/31) of ATL samples analyzed. Interestingly, NGS revealed nonsense mutations accompanied by loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in TET2 and MLL3, which was further confirmed by cloning and direct sequencing of DNA from uncultured cells. Finally, direct sequencing of matched control and tumor samples revealed that TET2 mutation was present only in ATL tumor cells. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that inactivation of MLL3 and TET2 may play an important role in the tumorigenesis process of HTLV-I-induced ATL. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12943-016-0500-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.