Clinical Significance and Potential Function of Complement Factor D in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by aggressive proliferation and a poor prognosis. The objective of this study is to elucidate the specific role of complement factor D (CFD) in AML, with the aim of identifying robust prognostic markers for the disease.

We performed a systematic investigation on clinical significance and potential function of CFD in AML by using the R Programming Language with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), The Human Protein Atlas (HPA), The University of ALabama at Birmingham CANcer data analysis Portal (UALCAN), Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA), Kaplan-Meier plotter, Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) database, and Comprehensive Analysis on Multi-Omics of Immunotherapy in Pan-cancer (CAMOIP) database. The expression of CFD in AML patients was verified by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR).

The expression of CFD was the highest in AML cells than in other tumor cell lines. The expression of CFD was also higher in AML patients than in the matched normal group. Compared with the low expression of the CFD group, high expression of CFD predicted better overall survival (OS) and lower tumor mutational burden (TMB) in AML patients. Moreover, a nomogram model based on CFD was successfully constructed to predict the OS of AML patients. Notably, the expression of CFD was associated with drug sensitivity and monocyte cell infiltration.

CFD could serve as a potential OS prognostic biomarker and guide clinical treatment for AML.