Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Apr;21(4):357-369.
doi: 10.1080/14728222.2017.1300255. Epub 2017 Mar 3.

Patients with acute myeloid leukemia can be subclassified based on the constitutive cytokine release of the leukemic cells; the possible clinical relevance and the importance of cellular iron metabolism

Annette K Brenner  1 , Tor Henrik Anderson Tvedt  1 , Ina Nepstad  1 , Kristin P Rye  1 , Karen M Hagen  1 , Håkon Reikvam  1   2 , Øystein Bruserud  1   2
Affiliations

Patients with acute myeloid leukemia can be subclassified based on the constitutive cytokine release of the leukemic cells; the possible clinical relevance and the importance of cellular iron metabolism

Annette K Brenner et al. Expert Opin Ther Targets. 2017 Apr.

Abstract

Objective: Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a heterogeneous malignancy; we studied how the constitutive cytokine release by the AML cells varies among patients.

Methods: We investigated the constitutive release of 28 mediators during in vitro culture for 79 consecutive patients.

Results: Constitutive cytokine release profiles differed among patients, and hierarchical clustering identified three subsets with high, intermediate and low release, respectively. The high-release subset showed high levels of most mediators, usually monocytic differentiation as well as altered mRNA expression of proteins involved in intracellular iron homeostasis and molecular trafficking; this subset also included 4 out of 6 patients with inv(16). Spontaneous in vitro apoptosis did not differ among the subsets. For the high-release patients, cytokines were released both by CD34+ and CD34- cells. The mRNA and released protein levels showed statistically significant correlations only for eleven of the cytokines. The overall survival after intensive anti-leukemic therapy was significantly higher for high-release compared with low-release patients. Pharmacological targeting of iron metabolism (iron chelation, transferrin receptor blocking) altered the cytokine release profile.

Conclusions: Subclassification of AML patients based on the constitutive cytokine release may be clinically relevant and a part of a low-risk (i.e. chemosensitive) AML cell phenotype.

Keywords: Acute myeloid leukemia; Flt3 mutations; cytokines; differentiation; iron metabolism.

PubMed Disclaimer