Chromatin Accessibility Landscapes of B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Identify Extensive Epigenomic Reprogramming and Heterogeneity Among Subtypes

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common malignancy in pediatric patients spanning both B- and T-cell lineages. ALL also occurs less commonly in adults but with cure rates of only around 30%. Past work has characterized ALL into molecular subtypes spanning a range of aberrant chromosomal rearrangements and oncogene chimeric fusions driving malignancy. While transcriptional profiling of these subtypes has been extensively examined, the accompanying chromatin accessibility landscape and corresponding gene regulatory repertoire is not well characterized for many subtypes. To better profile the ALL epigenomic and gene regulatory repertoire we examined chromatin accessibility of 12 distinct molecular subtypes (BCR-ABL1, ETV6-RUNX1, Hyperdiploid, Hypodiploid, KMT2A rearranged, Ph-Like, PAX5, DUX4/ERG, TCF3-PBX1, T-ALL, Early T Precursor and B-other) across 189 primary patient samples of pediatric ALL (n = 106) and adult ALL (n = 83) origin using ATAC-seq. To our knowledge, this represents the largest collection of chromatin accessibility data in primary ALL samples spanning multiple molecular subtypes to date. Collectively, we identified over 600,000 accessible chromatin sites in the ALL genome with over 50,000 regions of differentially accessible chromatin encompassing both common and subtype-specific modalities. Further, transcription factor (TF) footprint profiling of ATAC-seq yielded tens of thousands of candidate TF binding events and identified key TF drivers within distinct molecular subtypes. We additionally performed H3K27ac ChIP-seq in a subset of 12 primary ALL patient samples, with integration of these histone data for select patient samples allowing inferences about candidate super-enhancer drivers of ALL molecular subtypes. Overall, these analyses and data offer a window into the gene regulatory and epigenetic landscape of ALL, and further highlight the complexity and heterogeneity of accessible chromatin landscapes among distinct molecular subtypes of ALL.