Medicine› Genetics› Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Research

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia — Activation-induced deaminase (AID)

Submitted 2026-10-23

Field: Medicine › GeneticsType: No effect foundArea: chronic lymphocytic leukemiaTarget: Activation-induced deaminase (AID)Stage: preclinical

Hypothesis

AID, which can remove DNA methylation, would change the methylation of disease-related genes in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells and so change their expression.

What failed

After AID expression, only minor differences appeared at individual sites. There were no recurrent methylation changes at specific target sites and no change in global methylation.

Broken assumption

AID worsens chronic lymphocytic leukemia partly by demethylating and switching on disease-related genes.

Why

The abstract does not give a cause. AID's known effect in this leukemia seems to come through DNA mutation, not through demethylation.

From the published paper: Schubert et al. PLoS ONE, 2018. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

Unvetted lead — read the papers

New hypotheses this failure suggests, each with a crucial experiment, a rival explanation of the original result, and the papers it rests on. Written by AI from paper titles and abstracts found on OpenAlex (and Europe PMC, for life and health sciences).

Related failures (1)

Matched on shared genes, mechanisms and ways of failing as well as wording. Each shows why it matched — treat these as leads rather than verdicts.

innate immune memoryPolycomb group proteins as carriers of LPS memorydifferent research area
Polycomb group proteins, which keep a memory of developmental signals in chromatin, would also keep a memory of earlier exposure to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and change the response to a second exposure.
In reporter cells, neither a single nor repeated LPS pre-treatment changed how strongly LPS-responsive genes switched on after a second exposure.
Why it matched: similar wording · mechanism: Epigenetic regulation

Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.