Live

The Marseille Cancer Research Center celebrates its 50th anniversary ! -

Mar 2010 The Journal of investigative dermatology

Pediatric mastocytosis is a clonal disease associated with D816V and other activating c-KIT mutations.

Authors

Bodemer C, Hermine O, Palmérini F, Yang Y, Grandpeix-Guyodo C, Leventhal PS, Hadj-Rabia S, Nasca L, Georgin-Lavialle S, Cohen-Akenine A, Barete S, Feger F, Arock M, Catteau B, Sans B, Stalder JF, Skowron F, Thomas L, Lorette G, Plantin P, Bordigoni P, Lortholary O, de Prost Y, Moussy A, Sobol H, Dubreuil P

Summary

Adult mastocytosis is an incurable clonal disease associated with c-KIT mutations, mostly in exon 17 (D816V). In contrast, pediatric mastocytosis often spontaneously regresses and is considered a reactive disease. Previous studies on childhood mastocytosis assessed only a few patients and focused primarily on codon 816 mutations, with various results. In this study, we analyzed the entire c-KIT sequence from cutaneous biopsies of 50 children with mastocytosis (ages 0-16 years). A mutation of codon 816 (exon 17) was found in 42% of cases, and mutations outside exon 17 were observed in 44%. Unexpectedly, half of the mutations were located in the fifth Ig loop of c-KIT’s extracellular domain, which is encoded by exons 8 and 9. All mutations identified in this study were somatic and caused a constitutive activation of c-KIT. There was no clear phenotype-genotype correlation, no clear relationship between the mutations and familial versus spontaneous disease, and no significant change in the relative expression of the c-KIT GNNK+ and GNNK isoforms. These findings strongly support the idea that, although pediatric mastocytosis can spontaneously regress, it is a clonal disease most commonly associated with activating mutations in c-KIT.

Read the article