Survivin expression in chronic myeloid leukemia

Conte, Enrico; Stagno, Fabio; Guglielmo, Patrizia; Scuto, Anna; Consoli, Carla; Messina, Angelo

doi:10.1016/j.canlet.2004.10.034

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Volume 225, Issue 1 , Pages 105-110, 8 July 2005

Survivin expression in chronic myeloid leukemia

Enrico Conte
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Pathology Section, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 095313429; fax: +39 095320267.
- The first two authors contributed equally.
Fabio Stagno
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Hematology Sections, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy
- The first two authors contributed equally.
Patrizia Guglielmo
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Hematology Sections, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy
Anna Scuto
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Pathology Section, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy
Carla Consoli
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Hematology Sections, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy
Angelo Messina
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, Pathology Section, University of Catania, via Androne 83, Catania I-95124, Italy

Received 20 September 2004; received in revised form 20 October 2004; accepted 22 October 2004.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the expression of survivin (SVV) in 44 patients with typical Ph-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in different phases of the disease as well as in 20 matched healthy donors. We found a very high SVV expression in a predominant percentage of CML patients. We also observed a significantly increased SVV expression in patients in accelerated/blastic phase of the disease compared to patients in chronic phase. Moreover, SVV expression levels correlated in all CML patients with % of Ph-chromosome positive cells, with Bcr-Abl expression levels and with WBC-count. Based on this finding we suggest that SVV detection and monitoring in CML could represent both a useful biomarker and attractive candidate for devising new targeted and combined therapies in CML.

Keywords: Survivin, Chronic myeloid leukemia, Gene expression, Bcr-Abl