Dysregulated Activation of a Haemopoietic Growth Factor Gene Alone is Insufficient to Cause Malignant Haemopoietic Disease in Normal Haemopoietic Cells

Abstract

Conceptually, autostimulation of haemopoietic cells is an attractive hypothesis for leukaemic transformation. Many reports based on experiments with haemopoietic growth factor dependent cell lines have documented that autonomous production of the growth factor causes the previously non-tumorigenic cell line to produce fatal tumours (Schräder and Crapper, 1983; Lang et al., 1985; Hapel et al., 1986; Laker et al., 1987; Wong et al., 1987). Whether such experiments have relevance to human leukaemia development, however, remains questionable. In the first instance, the murine cell lines used have acquired a number of genetic changes as is readily evident from their abnormal karyotype. Secondly, the development of these immortalised but haemopoietic growth factor dependent cell lines is readily achieved with murine cells but is an extremely rare event using human cells.