Bone marrow VEGFC expression is associated with multilineage dysplasia and several prognostic markers in adult acute myeloid leukemia, but not with survival

Abstract

Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC) stimulates leukemia cell proliferation and survival, and promotes angiogenesis. We studied VEGFC expression in bone marrow samples from 353 adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients and its relationship with several clinical, cytogenetic, and molecular variables. We also studied the expression of 84 genes involved in VEGF signaling in 24 patients. We found that VEGFC expression was higher in AML patients with myelodysplasia-related changes (AML-MRC) than in patients with non-AML-MRC. We also found an association between VEGFC expression and the patient cytogenetic risk group, with those with a worse prognosis having higher VEGFC expression levels. No correlation was observed between VEGFC expression and survival or complete remission. VEGFC expression strongly correlated with expression of the VEGF receptors FLT1, KDR, and NRP1. Thus, in this series, VEGFC expression was increased in AML-MRC and in subgroups with a poorer prognosis, but has no impact on survival.

Keywords:

• Acute myeloid leukemia
• VEGFC expression
• VEGF signaling
• FLT1
• KDR
• NRP1

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Grant PI 11/07712 from the Spanish Ministry of Health Strategic Health Action (Acción Estratégica de Salud in its original Spanish) fund and the Acute Myeloblastic Leukemia Cooperative Study and Treatment Group (CETLAM; Grupo Cooperativo Para el estudio y Tratamiento de las Leucemias Agudas y Mielodisplasias in its original Spanish) Grant no. [FISPI11/00712].

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1422858.