Short Communication on Histone Modification Patterns using RPPA?Based Profiling Predict Outcome in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is a hematological malignancy with poor survival outcomes in children and adults. There is a need to enhance AML patient risk stratification to improve clinical outcomes. Precision medicine approaches that focus on the identification of patient-specific biomarkers are currently in development to improve diagnostics and treatment of cancer. Here, we comment on our studies showing the clinical significance of histone and chromatin modifier proteins in AML. Using proteomics, we identified novel subsets of adult AML patients with epigenetically distinct protein profiles that have clinical impact. More recently we discovered that overexpression of similar proteins also seems to predict poor prognosis in pediatric AML, as well as that epigenetic proteins form prognostic clusters in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In this commentary we focus on how we can improve precision medicine in leukemia by targeting the epigenetic landscape based on proteomics in clinical practice.