A classification based on T cell selection-related phenotypes identifies a subgroup of childhood T-ALL with favorable outcome in the COALL studies

During T cell selection in the thymic cortex more than 90% of the thymocytes are eliminated by apoptosis. Based on this biology, we propose to define blasts of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with the phenotype of cortical thymocytes (CD1⁺ and/or CD4⁺8⁺) as selection-related (SR) and all other T-ALL immunophenotypes as non-selection-related (NSR). The COALL cooperative treatment studies for childhood ALL offer a tool to study the outcome in T-ALL subgroups as children with T-ALL are allocated uniformly to the high risk arm of the protocol. In the COALL-85, -89 and -92 protocols, 39/83 cases presented as SR and 44/83 cases as NSR. Five-year event-free survival of SR phenotype is significantly better compared to the NSR group (0.87 ± 0.06 vs 0.66 ± 0.07, log rank test, P = 0.01). T-ALL with SR phenotype is a distinct subgroup of leukemia with excellent prognosis under a high risk treatment protocol.