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Ursula R. Kees¹, Jette Ford, Marcia Watson, Ashleigh Murch, Markus Ringer, Robert L. Walker and Paul Meltzer

Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, and Centre for Child Health Research, The University of Western Australia [U. R. K., J. F.] and Women’s and Children’s Pathology, King Edward Memorial and Princess Margaret Hospitals [M. W., A. M.], Perth, Australia, and National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 [M. R., R. L. W., P. M.]

¹ To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Division Children’s Leukemia and Cancer Research Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, P. O. Box 855, West Perth WA 6872, Australia. Phone: 618-9489 7852; Fax: 618-9489 7700; E-mail: ursula{at}ichr.uwa.edu.au

The development of new drugs against cancer requires established cell lines. They are needed for in vitro studies to identify candidate drugs and in xenograft models to measure drug efficacy in vivo. Specific criteria need to be fulfilled by cell lines used in the evaluation of potential novel therapeutic agents. It is imperative that they display the features of the particular cancer under investigation. Given the documented heterogeneity of cancers, relevant subtypes need to be represented. In this study, we have examined these aspects for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A panel of 13 leukemia cell lines recently established in our laboratory was analyzed. We used cDNA microarrays to define the gene expression profiles and compared the data with immunophenotyping and cytogenetic analyses. The expression profiles obtained showed excellent concordance with corresponding protein levels. Importantly, the panel of lines displayed the critical genetic features identified in clinically important acute lymphoblastic leukemia subtypes in childhood leukemia patients.