Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Clinical and Chemical Pathology

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous group of diseases characterized by uncontrolled proliferation of hematopoietic progenitor cells with arrest of maturation and disruption of normal hematopoiesis. NKp30 is a protein found on the surface of human natural killer (NK) cells. The ligand of NKp30 is called B7-H6. NKp30 belongs to a group of molecules called Natural Cytotoxicity Receptors (NCRs). When NKp30 on a NK cell binds to B7-H6 on a human tumor cell, the NK cell is triggered to become cytotoxic and exert antitumor effects. We studied the expression of NKp30 on 35 patients diagnosed with AML and 30 controls, to evaluate the impact of its expression on outcome and its possible association with other known prognostic markers. Flowcytometric analysis was performed using direct staining method by monoclonal antibody CD337 (NKp30) gated on NK cells (CD3-/56+).The expression of NKp30 on NK cells was found to be significantly lower in AML group compared to the control group, with p-value 0.042 for the NKp30% and p-value <0.001 for the rMFI. ROC analysis was used to predict cut off values for NKp30 expression as a marker for stratifying AML patients. NKp30% expression cut off was chosen at 11.155%. rMFI expression cut off was chosen at 4.13, with sensitivity (62.9% , 85.7%) and specificity (53.3% ,66.7%) respectively. Nkp30% significantly correlated with overall survival (P=0.030); where patients with high expression of NKp30% had longer OS time while patients with low expression of NKp30 % were more prone to earlier death than those with high marker expression (HR:2.580)

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