Fatal myeloproliferation, induced in mice by TEL/PDGFβR expression, depends on PDGFβR tyrosines 579/581

The t(5;12)(q33;p13) translocation associated with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) generates a TEL/PDGFβR fusion gene. Here, we used a murine bone marrow transplant (BMT) assay to test the transforming properties of TEL/PDGFβR in vivo. TEL/PDGFβR, introduced into whole bone marrow by retroviral transduction, caused a rapidly fatal myeloproliferative disease that closely recapitulated human CMML. TEL/PDGFβR transplanted mice developed leukocytosis with Gr-1⁺ granulocytes, splenomegaly, evidence of extramedullary hematopoiesis, and bone marrow fibrosis, but no lymphoproliferative disease. We assayed mutant forms of the TEL/PDGFβR fusion protein - including 8 tyrosine to phenylalanine substitutions at phosphorylated PDGFβR sites to which various SH2 domain-containing signaling intermediates bind - for ability to transform hematopoietic cells. All of the phenylalanine (F-) mutants tested conferred IL-3-independence to a cultured murine hematopoietic cell line, but, in the BMT assay, different F-mutants displayed distinct transforming properties. In transplanted animals, tyrosines 579/581 proved critical for the development of myeloproliferative phenotype. F-mutants with these residues mutated showed no sign of myeloproliferation but instead developed T-cell lymphomas. In summary, TEL/PDGFβR is necessary and sufficient to induce a myeloproliferative disease in a murine BMT model, and PDGFβR residues Y579/581 are required for this phenotype.