Chromatographic forms of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase in normal lymphoid cells and in leukemia cells at presentation and relapse

Normal thymocyte and bone marrow terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) have distinguishing characteristics by phosphocellulose chromatography in Tris buffer: marrow TdT elutes as a single peak at 0.3 M salt, whereas thymocyte TdT separates into two forms, one at 0.3 M salt and one at 0.4 M salt. Since the majority of TdT-positive acute leukemias are anatomically bone marrow-derived, one would have predicted the presence of a bone marrow TdT-phosphocellulose chromatographic pattern in such patients. However, in 376 consecutive, untreated TdT-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemias (ALL) studied by us we have invariably encountered the two-peak thymocyte-type phosphocellulose pattern. The TdT patterns in the thymic-dependent, TdT-positive lymphoma of AKR mice, and the TdT-positive bone marrow-derived, thymic-independent Abelson virus leukemia of Balb/C mice duplicate the situation in human ALL: a thymocyte pattern is seen in both the marrow-derived and thymus-derived diseases. This chromatographic difference between leukemia-associated and normal marrow-associated TdT in both murine and human leukemia suggested that phosphocellulose-TdT patterns might be useful for monitoring residual marrow tumour cell burden in TdT-positive leukemia. This has not turned out to be the case: in eight patients studied in early relapse the blast cell TdT pattern was the single-peak 0.3 M species. Therefore, leukemic cell TdT cannot reliably be distinguished from normal marrow cell TdT. The chromatographic behaviour of TdT may be regulated by phosphorylation-dephosphorylation, the 0.3 M salt peak can be converted to the 0.4 M salt species by treatment with protein kinase and ATP, and the 0.4 M species can be converted to the 0.3 M form by exposure to alkaline phosphatase. Thus, apparently anatomic compartment-specific forms of TdT may only reflect differing cellular metabolic activity.