Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Science - Department of Biochemistry

Acute myeloid leukemia is an aggressive myeloid neoplasm characterized by 20% myeloblasts in the blood or bone marrow. The aim of this work is to detect Flt3 mutation, c MPL & EphA4 expressions in AML and their relation to clinicopathological characteristics and patient's survival. RNA was extracted from blood samples of 58 AML patients and 20 age and sex matched controls. FLT3, cMPL and EphA4 expression was studied using RT-PCR and correlated to the clinical and survival data. 35.9%, 76.9% and 56.4% of the adults were positive for FLT3 mutation, cMPL and EphA4 respectively. 15.8%, 47.4% and 36.8% of pediatrics were positive for FLT3 mutation, cMPL and EphA4 respectively. 76.9% of the adults and 89.5% of children expressed CD33. 64.1 % of the adults and 42.1% of children expressed CD34. CD34 expression was significantly associated with both FLT3 mutation and cMPL expression. CD34, FLT3 and cMPL negative cases have significantly higher overall survival than positive cases. Conclusion: CD34 expression is significantly associated with both flt3 mutation and cMPL expression which could be used as a marker for bad prognosis. The negative expression of CD34, cMPL and flt3 may predict a longer OS. Further studies are needed to investigate the mechanism that may correlation CD34 to both markers

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