Back

Single-cell multiomic mapping of genetic predisposition to childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Lee, A. J.; Neehus, A.-L.; Wahlster, L.; Agarwal, G.; Weng, C.; Zhang, A.; Liu, T.; Shelton, S.; Ye, T.; Volpe, L. d.; Cohn, O.; Poeschla, M.; King, E.; Ha, S. A.; Turvey, A. K.; Chiang, C. W. K.; Wiemels, J. L.; de Smith, A. J.; Sankaran, V. G.

2026-08-07 cancer biology
10.64898/2026.08.06.743308 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Inherited genetic variation substantially increases the risk for developing childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer in children, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. To address this limitation, we employ a single-cell multiomic framework to functionally dissect common regulatory variants associated with B-ALL risk. Coupling this multiomic analysis with assessment of allelic skews in chromatin accessibility, we reveal the impact of risk alleles and disruptions in transcription factor networks specific to B-cell progenitors, thereby providing mechanistic insights into altered regulatory programs underlying B-ALL predisposition. By constructing long-range variant-to-target gene maps, we identify 34 high-confidence B-ALL susceptibility genes. Among these, we uncover and functionally validate a risk allele that selectively upregulates expression of ELK3, a previously unrecognized regulator of B-cell development and leukemogenesis. Together, these findings establish a comprehensive variant-to-function map of cell state-specific regulatory disruptions underlying inherited predisposition to B-ALL and define new risk mechanisms, which could pave the way for future targeted prevention approaches.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.