CD3D and PRKCQ work together to discriminate between B-cell and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Different therapeutic methods have been developed for the B-cell and T-cell subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The identification of molecular biomarkers that can accurately discriminate between B-cell and T-cell ALLs will facilitate the quick determination of therapeutic plans, as well as reveal the intrinsic mechanisms underlining the two different ALL subtypes. This study computationally screened the high-throughput transcriptome dataset for multiple candidate biomarkers and verified their discrimination abilities in an independent sample set using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. Both technologies suggest that the two genes CD3D and PKRCQ together provided a good model for classification of B-cell and T-cell ALLs, whereas the individual genes did not show consistent discrimination between the two ALL subtypes. Supplementary material is available at http://healthinformaticslab.org/supp/.