ISSN: 2155-9899
Kazunori Nakase, Kenkichi Kita and Naoyuki Katayama
Recent studies have shown that cytokine/cytokine receptor systems affect leukemic cell biology and clinical behavior of leukemic patients. Among various cytokine receptors, only interleukin-2 receptor α-chain (IL-2Rα, CD25) expression predicts a poor prognosis of patients (≤ 60 years old) with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Even in prognostic analyses including unfavorable surface markers and cytogenetics, IL-2Rα is recognized to be an independent adverse indicator in such patients. Assessment of the presence of IL-2Rα should be essential to make therapeutic risk classification of AML patients in a future. However, as the lack of IL-2 responsiveness is observed in AML cells, further investigations are required to clarify the mechanism why IL-2Rα(+) AML patients have a dismal clinical outcome