ARTN and CCL23 predicted chemosensitivity in acute myeloid leukemia: an Olink^® proteomics approach

The standard "7 + 3" induction results in 30% of de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients not achieving complete remission (CR). We aimed to utilize the Olink^® platform to compare the bone marrow plasma proteomic profiles of newly diagnosed de novo AML patients who did and did not achieve CR following "7 + 3" induction treatment.

This prospective study included 43 untreated AML patients, stratified into CR (n = 29) and non-CR (n = 14) groups based on their response to "7 + 3" induction therapy. We employed the Olink^® Explore-384 Inflammation platform for proteomic analysis to investigate differences in bone marrow plasma protein levels between the CR and non-CR groups.

Proteomic analysis demonstrated that the CR group exhibited significantly higher bone marrow plasma levels of ARTN and CCL23 than did the non-CR group. Immunohistochemical staining confirmed a higher proportion of tissue samples with intense staining for ARTN (25.40% vs. 7.05%, p = 0.013) and CCL23 (24.14% vs. 14.29%, p = 0.039) in the CR group. These findings were corroborated by bulk-RNA-seq, which indicated significantly elevated mRNA expression levels of ARTN (1.93 vs. -0.09; p = 0.003) and CCL23 (1.50 vs. 0.12; p = 0.021) in the CR group. The Human Protein Atlas provided external support for our findings.

The results suggest that ARTN and CCL23 may serve as biomarkers for predicting responsiveness to the "7 + 3" induction in untreated AML. Using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to identify the roles of ARTN and CCL23 in predicting AML chemosensitivity may enhance clinical applicability in the future.