MEIS1 and acute leukemia: By using quantitative real-time PCR to investigate gene expression in 100 children with acute leukemia and comparing them to those of healthy controls, Adamaki and co-workers [86] showed that aberrantly high HOXA9 and MEIS1 gene expression was associated to different leukemic subtypes, including various maturation stages of B-cell ALL and other cytogenetic MLL-positive populations, suggesting that these genes are involved in the development of a broad range of leukemic subtypes in childhood.