High Expression of AHSP, EPB42, GYPC and HEMGN Predicts Favorable Prognosis in FLT3-ITD-Negative Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous clonal disease and patients with AML who harbor an FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) mutation present several dilemmas for the clinician. This study aims to identify novel targets for explaining the dilemmas. METHODS We analyzed four microarray gene expression profiles to investigate changes in whole genome expression associated with FLT3-ITD mutation. RESULTS We identified 22 differentially expressed genes which are commonly expressed among all four profiles. Kaplan-Meier analysis of the dataset GSE12417 revealed that low expression of AHSP, EPB42, GYPC and HEMGN predicted poor prognosis (AHSP: P=0.0317, HR=1.894; EPB42: P=0.0382, HR=1.859; GYPC: P=0.0015, HR=2.051; HEMGN: P=0.0418, HR=1.838 in GSE12417 test cohort; AHSP: P=0.0279, HR=1.548; EPB42: P=0.0398, HR=1.505; GYPC: P=0.0408, HR=1.501; HEMGN: P=0.0143, HR=1.630 in GSE12417 validation cohort). When patients were FLT3-ITD positive, the expression of FLT3 was significantly increased (all P<0.05 in four profiles), and correleation analysis of four profiles revealed that the expression of the four candidate genes negatively correlated with FLT3 expression. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that AHSP, EPB42, GYPC and HEMGN may be suitable biomarkers for diagnostic or therapeutic strategies for FLT3-ITD-positive AML patients.