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Although chemotherapy has been improved for leukemia, patients with MLL-rearranged (MLL-r) leukemia exhibit poor treatment response and prognosis.  A work in Haematologica conducted by Dr. Ruey-Bing Yang’s group showed that SCUBE1 plays a critical pathogenic function in MLL-r leukemia by acting as a FLT3 coreceptor in facilitating the interaction between FLT3 ligand and FLT3, augmenting downstream LYN-AKT activation for leukemic cell survival and proliferation. SCUBE1 is a potential target for immunotherapy in MLL-r leukemia because anti-SCUBE1 conjugated with antimitotic agent MMAE leads to cell killing specifically on MLL-r leukemia.

*The first author, Binay K. Sahoo is a Ph. D. student of Taiwan International Graduate Program in Molecular Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Academia Sinica. The second and third authors, Yuh-Charn Lin and Cheng-Fen Tu are Post-Doctoral Fellow in Dr. Ruey-Bing Yang’ Lab. in Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica.
*This study was conducted at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica.