Expression of angiopoietins and vascular endothelial growth factors and their clinical significance in acute myeloid leukemia

✍ Scribed by Hsin-An Hou; Wen-Chien Chou; Liang-In Lin; Jih-Luh Tang; Mei-Hsuan Tseng; Chi-Fei Huang; Ming Yao; Chien-Yuan Chen; Woei Tsay; Hwei-Fang Tien

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 726 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0145-2126
• DOI: 10.1016/j.leukres.2007.08.010

✦ Synopsis

Angiogenic factors play an essential role in normal and pathologic angiogenesis, but their clinical role in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains unclear. We investigated the expression of Ang-1, Ang-2, Tie2, VEGF-A, and VEGF-C genes in bone marrow (BM) mononuclear cells by real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR) in a cohort of 126 patients with newly diagnosed de novo AML and normal marrow donors. Here we show that high pre-treatment levels of Ang-2 in the BM indicate an unfavorable prognosis in AML. Only karyotype (hazard ratio 2.19, 95% CI 1.25-3.42, P = 0.005) and expression of Ang-2 (hazard ratio 2.05, 95% CI 1.20-3.52, P = 0.009), but not other angiogenic factors, were independent prognostic factors for overall survival by multivariate analysis. The prognostic significance of Ang-2 expression was more obvious in the subgroup of patients with intermediate-risk cytogenetics. Subgroup analysis showed that Ang-2 expression had prognostic impact on patients with low (but not high) Ang-1 or Tie2 levels, and on patients with high (but not low) VEGF-A or VEGF-C levels.