Tumor-Associated Macrophages Maybe Associated with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Survival and Prognosis

Objective:Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in cancer microenvironment were reported take a center stage in promoting tumor metastatic spread. However, whether TAMs that have infiltrated leukemia tissues is involved in tumor progression have not been proved, so study on TAMs interaction with myeloid leukemia cells was initiated

Methods: A total of 16 refractory and relapsed acute leukemia patients and 10 healthy control volunteers were enrolled in this study. Bone marrow pathology samples were obtained at the time of the diagnosis. The expression of TAMs in the cancer microenvironment was assessed by immunohistochemistry.

Results: The expression of TAMs in leukemia patients was significantly higher than in healthy control group (P= 0.001), moreover, the progression-free and overall survival rate were significantly worse in the high-TAMs group than in the low-TAMs group (P= 0.0012 and P= 0.0207, respectively.

Conclusions: TAMs may create a microenvironment favorable for cancer development and were correlated with a poor prognosis, so TAMs maybe a useful prognostic marker reflecting the status of the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, targeting TAMs may be a new strategy for treating refractory and relapsed acute leukemia.