IMR Press / FBS / Volume 1 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.2741/S19

Frontiers in Bioscience-Scholar (FBS) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article

The leukemogenic activity of TaxHTLV-1 during human alphabeta T cell development

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1 Virologie Humaine, INSERM -U758, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France
2 2Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France
3 IFR 128 BioSciences Lyon-Gerland, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Schol Ed) 2009, 1(1), 194–204; https://doi.org/10.2741/S19
Published: 1 June 2009
Abstract

The regulatory Tax protein of HTLV-1 (Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus type 1) is critically involved in the initiation of ATL (adult T-cell leukaemia). Indeed, Tax provides infected T-cells with a growth advantage and with the potential to get transformed through the deregulation of cell-cycle progression and the acquisition of genetic alterations. Considering that leukemias are induced by disturbances in hematopoietic cells development, we hypothesize that the expression of Tax in human immature thymocytes is a prerequisite to the emergence of ATL cells. Studies of alph abeta T-cell development in the thymus have shown that beta-selection, an early important checkpoint, is regulated by transcription factors that are decisive in the control of cell proliferation, differentiation and survival. Interestingly, Tax is endowed with the ability to interfere with the activity of these transcription factors. We therefore propose that the HTLV-1 infection of these specific target thymocytes leads to a transcriptional deregulation of early alphabeta T cell development, thus inducing a pre-leukemogenic event that favours the subsequent proliferation of ATL cells.

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