Downregulated Poly-C binding protein-1 is a novel predictor associated with poor prognosis in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Depletion of Poly-C binding protein-1(PCBP1) is implicated in various human malignancies. However, the underlying biological effect of PCBP1 in cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), still remains elusive. The purpose of this study was to examine the expression and clinical outcome of PCBP1in acute myeloid leukemia.

Bone marrow fluids of 88 newly diagnosed AML patients were sampled, and the PCBP1 mRNA expression level was evaluated using quantitative RT-PCR. The association between PCBP1 expression and clinicopathological features or the survival status of the patients was assessed by Chi-square test and Kaplan-Meier method.

Comparing newly diagnosed AML patients to normal healthy donors, PCBP1 expression was significantly decreased in AML patients (P < 0.001). Conversely, PCBP1 expression had accordingly recovered back to normal in patients with complete remission (P < 0.001). Clinical feature analyses showed that PCBP1 expression was negatively correlated with white blood cell count (P = 0.024). In addition, patients with low PCBP1 expression had poor disease-free survival (11.8% vs. 45.3%; P = 0.01) and overall survival (18.2% vs. 42.4%; P = 0.032), respectively.

Taken together, our results showed for the first time that expression of PCBP1 was down-regulated in newly diagnosed AML patients and might be an independent prognostic marker in AML and should to be further investigated.