Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is characterized by a t(15;17) which fuses the 17q retinoic acid alpha-receptor sequence to the 15q PML gene sequence. The resulting fusion product plays a role in the development and maintenance of APL, and is very rarely found in other acute myeloid leukemia (AML) subtypes. Rare complex APL genomic rearrangements have retinoic acid alpha-receptor sequence deletions. Here we report a retinoic acid alpha-receptor sequence deletion in a case of AML without differentiation. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a retinoic acid alpha-receptor sequence deletion in this AML subtype.
Keywords: AML-M1; AML-M3; Acute myelogenous leukemia without maturation; Acute promyelocytic leukemia; Deletion; PML/RAR?; t(15;17)(q22;q21).