Quantitative assessment of PRAME expression in diagnosis of childhood acute leukemia

PRAME is expressed at low levels in normal testes and highly in solid tumor cells and hematological malignancies. The purpose of this study was to investigate PRAME expression levels in children with acute leukemia with real-time PCR analysis. Seventeen children with newly diagnosed or relapsed acute leukemia (11 ALL, 4 AML, 1 acute myeloblastic leukemia secondary to MDS, 1 ALL at relapse) and a control group of seven children were studied. Overexpression of PRAME was found in 52.9% (3 AML, 6 ALL) of the patients studied. No important correlation between PRAME expression and the patients' prognosis was observed. The above findings indicate that PRAME expression in acute leukemia does not seem to be of prognostic significance, whereas it might represent a candidate marker for the monitoring of minimal residual disease.