High expression of HMGA2 independently predicts poor clinical outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia.
Marquis M., Beaubois C., Lavallée V-P., Abrahamowicz M., Danieli C., Lemieux S., Ahmad I., Wei A., Ting SB., Fleming S., Schwarer A., Grimwade D., Grey W., Hills RK., Vyas P., Russell N., Sauvageau G., Hébert J.
In acute myeloid leukemia (AML), risk stratification based on cytogenetics and mutation profiling is essential but remains insufficient to select the optimal therapy. Accurate biomarkers are needed to improve prognostic assessment. We analyzed RNA sequencing and survival data of 430 AML patients and identified HMGA2 as a novel prognostic marker. We validated a quantitative PCR test to study the association of HMGA2 expression with clinical outcomes in 358 AML samples. In this training cohort, HMGA2 was highly expressed in 22.3% of AML, mostly in patients with intermediate or adverse cytogenetics. High expression levels of HMGA2 (H + ) were associated with a lower frequency of complete remission (58.8% vs 83.4%, P