Published in:
Open Access 01-12-2021 | Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Research article
Identification of immune subtypes of Ph-neg B-ALL with ferroptosis related genes and the potential implementation of Sorafenib
Published in: BMC Cancer | Issue 1/2021
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Background
The clinical outcome of Philadelphia chromosome-negative B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph-neg B-ALL) varies considerably from one person to another after clinical treatment due to lack of targeted therapies and leukemia’s heterogeneity. Ferroptosis is a recently discovered programmed cell death strongly correlated with cancers. Nevertheless, few related studies have reported its significance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Methods
Herein, we collected clinical data of 80 Ph-neg B-ALL patients diagnosed in our center and performed RNA-seq with their initial bone marrow fluid samples. Throughout unsupervised machine learning K-means clustering with 24 ferroptosis related genes (FRGs), the clustered patients were parted into three variant risk groups and were performed with bioinformatics analysis.
Results
As a result, we discovered significant heterogeneity of both immune microenvironment and genomic variance. Furthermore, the immune check point inhibitors response and potential implementation of Sorafenib in Ph-neg B-ALL was also analyzed in our cohort. Lastly, one prognostic model based on 8 FRGs was developed to evaluate the risk of Ph-neg B-ALL patients.
Conclusion
Jointly, our study proved the crucial role of ferroptosis in Ph-neg B-ALL and Sorafenib is likely to improve the survival of high-risk Ph-neg B-ALL patients.