Impact of Genetic Ancestry on Genomics and Survival Outcomes in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
Newman H, Lee SHR, Pölönen P, Shraim R, Li Y, Liu H, Aplenc R, Bandyopadhyay S, Chen C, Devidas M, Diorio C, Dunsmore K, Elghawy O, Elhachimi A, Fuller T, Gupta S, Hall J, Hughes AD, Hunger SP, Loh ML, Martinez Z, McCoy MF, Mullen CG, Pounds SB, Raet
The influence of genetic ancestry on genomics in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL) has not been fully explored. We examined the impact of genetic ancestry on multi-omic alterations, survival outcomes, and risk stratification. Among 1309 children and young adults with T-ALL treated on the Children's Oncology Group trial AALL0434, the prognostic value of five commonly altered T-ALL genes varied by ancestry-including NOTCH1, which was associated with superior overall survival for patients of European ancestry but non-prognostic among patients of African ancestry. Integrating genetic ancestry with published T-ALL risk classifiers, we identified that a X01 Penalized Cox Regression classifier stratified patients regardless of ancestry, whereas a European multi-gene classifier misclassified patients of certain ancestries. Overall, 80% of patients harbored a genomic alteration in at least one gene with differential prognostic impact in an ancestry-specific manner. These data demonstrate the importance of incorporating genetic ancestry into genomic risk classification.
Blood cancer discovery, 2025-05-31