In addition, leukemias display transcriptional upregulation of oncogenes such as Myc or Bcl2, and downregulation of tumor suppressors such as Ikzf1, Ikzf2, Arid1b, or Arid2. Irrespective of the collaborating hits, the transformation process clearly associates with a striking increase in IL-7R-mediated signaling (evidenced e.g. by mTOR and STAT5 signaling upregulation, as well as MYC activation) from the pre-leukemic to the leukemic stage, and IL-7R-mediated signaling is required for leukemia cell maintenance. Here, IKZF1 is linked to neoplasm.