The homeobox gene MEIS1 is amplified in IMR-32 and highly expressed in other neuroblastoma cell lines

Neuroblastoma is a childhood tumour of the sympathetic nervous system that demonstrates striking clinical heterogeneity. In order to determine which g enes are abnormally expressed in neuroblastoma, we screened regions of ampl ification from the short arm of chromosome 2 in the neuroblastoma cell line IMR-32 and found that the homeobox gene, myeloid ecotropic integration sit e 1 (MEIS1), is highly amplified. MEIS1 normally maps to chromosome band 2p 14. High expression of MEISI without amplification was also found in other neuroblastoma cell lines, with and without MYCN amplification, and in medul loblastoma and erythroleukaemia cell lines. MEISI is highly expressed in ce rebellum and ubiquitously expressed in normal immunehaematopoietic tissues and is thought to be important in cell proliferation and differentiation. W hile several lines of evidence point towards a role for homeobox genes in t he development of other malignancies, this is the first report showing the amplification of a homeobox gene in neuroblastoma. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scienc e Ltd. All rights reserved.