[Expression of insulin-like growth factor receptor type I in marrow nucleated cells from hematologic malignancies and...

To explore the expression of insulin-like growth factor receptor type I (IGF-IR) and its relationship to apoptosis in hematopoietic cells of MDS and AML marrow, bone marrow nucleated cells from 16 patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and 16 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were collected for analysis, respectively. Another 16 normal donors' marrow samples were taken as controls. Immunocytochemical method (APAAP) and TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) fluorescence were used simultaneously on cytospins of nucleated cells from these patients. Then, the ratios of IGF-IR positive cells and apoptosis cells in all nucleated cells were counted separately. The results showed that (1) there was a higher IGF-IR expression rate (56.8 +/- 14.3)% in nucleated cells of MDS marrow than that in normal marrow (40.4 +/- 9.6)% (P < 0.01). Also IGF-IR positive rate in AML marrow (86.8 +/- 13.8)% was significantly higher than that in normal marrow (P < 0.01). Furthermore, IGF-IR had higher expression in AML marrow when compared to MDS marrow (P < 0.01); (2) apoptosis in nucleated cells of MDS marrow (5.4 +/- 3.0)% was significantly higher than that in normal marrow (1.2 +/- 0.9)% (P < 0.01) and AML marrow (0.3 +/- 0.4)% (P < 0.01), while there was less apoptosis in AML marrow than that in normal marrow (P < 0.01); (3) apoptosis occurred mainly in IGF-IR negative cells (9.0 +/- 4.8)% and less in IGF-IR positive cells (1.4 +/- 2.4)% (P < 0.01). IGF-IR expression showed negative correlation with apoptosis (r = -0.852, P < 0.01); (4) IGF-IR of MDS nucleated cells in RAEB/RAEB-t/CMML expressed higher than that in RA/RAS (64.1 +/- 3.2% vs 53.5 +/- 16.2%) subgroup, although no significant difference was found (P > 0.05); and apoptosis in RAEB/RAEB-t/CMML subgroup was lower than that in RA/RAS cases (3.1 +/- 2.1% vs 6.4 +/- 2.8%) (P < 0.05); (5) IGF-IR positive rate in nucleated cells of MDS and AML marrow showed positive correlation with blast rate (r = 0.677; P < 0.01). It is concluded that there is overexpression of IGF-IR in marrow nucleated cells in MDS and AML cases. And it seems that the overexpression of IGF-IR may suggest some malignant proliferation tendency and suppress cell apoptosis through some mechanism in these malignant hematologic ailments. So, anti-IGF-IR will become a new approach for therapy of MDS and AML.