Clinical and prognostic relevance of expression in acute myeloid leukemia.

BACKGROUND

Accumulating studies have been made to understand the association between chemokine ligand-12 ()/ chemokine receptor 4 () and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, large-scale data analysis of potential relationship between and AML remains insufficient.

METHODS

We collected abundant expression data and AML samples from several publicly available datasets. The CIBERSORT algorithm was used to quantify immune cell fractions and the online website of STRING was utilized for gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis. The statistical analysis and graphical work were mainly performed via the R software.

RESULTS

expression was extremely down-regulated in AML. Clinically, low expression was correlated with higher white blood cells (WBCs) ( < 0.0001), more blasts in bone marrow (BM) ( < 0.001) and peripheral blood (PB) ( < 0.0001), -internal tandem duplications (-ITD) ( = 0.010) and mutations ( = 0.015). More importantly, reduced expression predicted worse overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS) in all AML, non-M3-AML, and cytogenetically normal (CN)-AML patients in three independent cohorts. As for immune cell infiltration, high expressed groups tended to harbor more memory B cells and plasma cells infiltration while low expressed groups exhibited more eosinophils infiltration. GO enrichment and KEGG pathways analysis revealed the potential biological progress the gene participating in.

CONCLUSIONS

is significantly down-regulated in AML and low expression is an independent and poor predictor of AML prognosis. expression level correlates with clinical and immune characteristics of AML, which could provide potential assistance for treatment. Prospective studies are needed to further validate the impact of expression before routine clinical application in AML.