BAALC and ERG expression levels at diagnosis have no prognosis impact on acute myeloid leukemia patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Abstract

Brain and acute leukemia, cytoplasmic (BAALC) and ETS-related gene (ERG) expression levels are independent prognostic factors for acute myeloid leukemia (AML); however, their prognostic impacts on AML patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) require further investigation. We studied 71 de novo AML patients treated with allo-HSCT and defined low and high expressers according to the median expression levels of BAALC and ERG at diagnosis respectively. High BAALC expression was associated with wild-type NPM1 (P = 0.000) and RUNX1 mutations (P = 0.027). High ERG expression was associated with FLT3-ITD absence (P = 0.003) and wild-type NPM1 (P = 0.001). BAALC and ERG expression levels were significantly correlated with each other (P = 0.001). Survival analyses including Kaplan-Meier curves and univariate and multivariate analysis consistently reported that there were no significant differences for both event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) (all P > 0.1), between high versus low BAALC and ERG expressers. Our study suggested that despite of their well-known adverse role in prognosis of AML, neither BAALC nor ERG expression levels at diagnosis had effect on survival of AML patients who underwent allo-HSCT.