CD37 high expression as a potential biomarker and association with poor outcome in acute myeloid leukemia

CD37, a member of the transmembrane 4 superfamilies (TM4SF), has been proved to be abnormally expressed in a range of malignancies. Herein, we investigate the effects of CD37 expression and analyze its clinical outcome in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients.

The RNA-seq and clinical data of AML patients were obtained from cBioPortal database. CD37 correlated genes, the expression prolife and survival curve of eight key genes were acquired from Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) and UALCAN. Pathway enrichment and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis were performed based on metascape databases.

Our results showed that CD37 mRNA expression level was significantly up-regulated in patients with AML compared with healthy persons. Patients with high CD37 expression had shorter overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Pathway analysis data showed that CD37 is involved in DNA replication, RNA transport, Salmonella infection, ribonucleoprotein complex biogenesis, cell cycle phase transition and so on. Furthermore, we found eight genes correlated with CD37 are all highly expressed in AML patients, and high expression is associated with poor prognosis.

Our study described systematical expression profiles and the prognostic values of CD37 in AML; our data suggested CD37 might be novel therapeutic target and promising prognostic biomarker in the patients.