Circulating T cells derived from acute leukemia patients with severe therapy-induced cytopenia express a wide range of chemokine receptors

Abstract

Normal T cells can mediate antileukemic reactivity after allogeneic stem cell transplantation and T cell targeting immunotherapy is now considered for patients receiving conventional chemotherapy. This antileukemic reactivity is most effective in patients with a low leukemia cell burden, and this burden is expected to be lowest early after transplantation/chemotherapy when patients are cytopenic. Local T cell recruitment will then be essential for the efficiency of the antileukemic response. In this context, the authors compared the chemokine receptor expression for T cells derived from healthy individuals and acute myelogenous leukemia patients with therapy-induced cytopenia after conventional chemotherapy or allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Circulating CD3⁺ T cells showed the same chemokine receptor expression for all three groups: CCR1^low, CCR2^low, CCR3^low, CCR4^intermediate, CCR5^intermediate, CCR7^{low/intermediate}, CXCR2^low, CXCR3^intermediate, and CXCR4^high. Thus, only minor differences between the groups were observed when comparing individual receptors, and we therefore conclude that the chemokine receptor profiles of circulating CD3⁺ T cells show no qualitative and only minor quantitative differences for these three groups.

Keywords:

• ACUTE MYELOGENOUS LEUKAEMIA
• T CELLS
• CCR
• CXCR
• CHEMOTHERAPY
• STEM CELL TRANSPLANTATION