A specific bone marrow cytokine pattern in de novo acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous group of hematopoietic cancers. Cytokines play an important role in the regulation of normal and pathologic hematopoiesis. A pro-inflammatory state, described in hematopoietic malignancies, may participate in clonal selection. To identify recurrent cytokine patterns according to AML ontogenic subtypes, we quantified the concentration of 49 cytokines in the bone marrow (BM) plasma from 124 patients with AML or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and from 94 healthy volunteers. We confirmed a pro-inflammatory profile in MDS and AML, with increased concentrations of CXCL8, CXCL10 and IL-6. Only a few cytokines varied when comparing AML to MDS. De novo AML subtypes carry a specific cytokine pattern dominated by the increase in CLEC11A concentrations and the decrease in FLT3 ligand concentrations. These cytokines could participate in clonal selection in this subtype of AML while being less critical in the other AMLs - i.e. secondary-like or TP53-mutated subtypes.

Keywords: AML ontogeny; CLEC11A; FLT3L; bone marrow cytokines.