Clinical Importance of PRAME Gene Expression in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: The PRAME (preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma) gene is frequently over expressed in a wide variety of malignant diseases, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Objective: To investigate the expression of PRAME gene in AML and its importance in the prognosis. Patients and methodsThe transcript level of PRAME gene was detected in peripheral blood specimens from 72 de novo AML patients and 40 control subjects by using real-time quantitative PCR and the prognostic value of PRAME was determined through treatment outcome and survival analysis. Results: PRAME gene was highly expressed in 74% of de novo AML cases while low expression was detected among healthy controls, the mean value of PRAME gene expression was highest among M3 AML subtype and lowest among M5b AML subtype. No significant correlation could be observed between PRAME gene expression and different CBC parameters, age, gender or cytogenetics, but there was a significance positive correlation between PRAME gene expression with treatment outcome, disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival. Conclusion: PRAME gene over expression might be a good prognostic factor of AML and could be a useful target for immunotherapy.