Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic and Myeloid Leukemia Express Unique Combinations of Protein Expression Patterns

Context Pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are heterogeneous diseases mediated by changes in protein expression. As most chemotherapeutic agents target proteins, and because overall survival of pediatric AML is far inferior to both pre-B and T-ALL, we aimed to compare the proteomic landscape of pediatric T-ALL and AML. Objective To compare protein expression in pediatric T-ALL and AML. DESIGN: Reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA) analysis was used to measure protein expression in 858 acute leukemia samples (358 T-ALL and 500 AML) and 61 normal CD34+ samples using 270 validated antibodies. Results Of the 270 analyzed proteins, 136 proteins (50%) were differentially expressed between T-ALL and AML; 61 were higher in T-ALL, 75 in AML (P Conclusions This study provides support for our previous hypothesis that pediatric T-ALL and AML can be characterized by recurrent protein expression patterns. While most PC and CON were found in both diseases, SIG were specific to either T-ALL or AML. We found similar results when comparing B-ALL to AML in adults. Shared CON indicate that there are common features between pediatric T-ALL and AML. Proteins or pathways with similar utilization in both diseases may allow for information on clinical utility from one disease to be applicable to the other. Those with differential utilization are likely to be uninformative with respect to clinical utility in the other disease. Grant Funding R01 CA164024 and R01 CA193776