Role of Notch Pathway in the pathogenesis of T- ALL

As was shown in the literature over the years Notch pathway was reported to play an essential role in the pathogenesis of T-ALL. However, most studies concentrated on the role of Notch1 owing to the discovery of several mutations which are present in > 50% of T-ALL cases. On the other hand a controversy was reported regarding the role of Notch3 in T-ALL where some authors reported its pivotal role in T-ALL while others dismissed its role due to the absence of mutations in this gene. Thus in this work our aim was to study the expression of the main genes involved in the Notch pathway namely Notch1, Notch3, Hes1 and the gene encoding pT alpha, to verify the role of Notch1 versus Notch3 in the pathogenesis of T-ALL and to correlate the level of the expression of such genes to other prognostic parameters. We also wanted to compare children to adults as ALL constitutes two different pathological entities in the two age groups