Recently, research from Zhu et al. showed that hematopoietic transcription factor PU.1 expression was significantly lower in newly diagnosed APL patient samples as compared to normal hematopoietic cells, which may relate to the expression level of PML-RARα, and they found that suppression of PU.1 expression occurred concurrently with PML-RARα expression, the authors suggested that low PU.1 expression in APL patients is required for disease initiation and progression [44]. The gene discussed is SPI1; the disease is acute promyelocytic leukemia.