Assessment of Serum Vimentin Level in Adult Egyptian Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) Patients and Evaluation of its Prognostic Value

Abstract

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of all adult acute leukemias. Despite a high rate of response to induction chemotherapy, only 30–40% of adult patients with ALL will achieve long-term remission. Recently, advances in ALL diagnosis and risk stratification were made using minimal residual disease response and genetic studies. Also progress in treatment of adult ALL has been achieved by adopting pediatric protcols, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies. Vimentin, major component of intermediate family of proteins, has been reportedly over expressed in many solid malignancies such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and gastrointestinal cancers. Due to its role in tumorgenesis, vimentin serves as a potential target therapy. However, its role in hematological malignancies is unclear. So further research is needed to know vimentin’s role in ALL to help open up new approaches for development of target therapy aiming to enhance ALL treatment and outcome. In this study, we measured vimentin level in newly diagnosed adult acute leukemia patients aiming to evaluate its expression and prognostic value. We found that vimentin level was significantly higher in patients group than control group. Also vimentin level was significantly correlated with higher white blood cell count. But our study shows no significant correlation between vimentin with patients demographic data, extramedullary disease, presence of Philadelphia chromosome and overall survival. Further studies are needed with larger study group to prove the relationship between vimentin and clinical outcome. .