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Endocan, a potential prognostic and diagnostic biomarker of acute leukemia

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Abstract

Recent evidence indicated that endocan may be a potential cell marker and a new target for cancers including acute leukemia since the serum endocan level in patients with acute leukemia was associated with the status of the disease, i.e., endocan was higly expressed in untreated acute leukemia, but decreased after chemotherapy and increased again during bone marrow regeneration. The present study showed that there was high level expression of endocan in cytoplasm of bone marrow blasts of patients with acute myeloid leukemia or acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The expression level of endocan was significantly decreased when the patients underwent remission after chemotherapy and re-bounces back when the acute leukemia relapsed. No obvious change in expression of endocan was observed before and after chemotherapy if the patients showed no remission after chemotherapy. (N-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)  retinamide), a potent anti-angiogenic agent, could not only down-regulate the expression of vascular epithelial growth factor, but also decrease endocan transcription and expression in NB4 cells, a human acute promyelocytic leukemia cell line. These observations suggest that endocan could act as a predictor for the severity and the prognosis of acute leukemia. The findings could be used as the basis for future targeted therapy directed against bone marrow angiogenesis in acute leukemia treatment.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Chen Feihu for kindly providing 4-HPR used in this study. This study was supported by the Fund for Young Talents in College of Anhui Province (No. 2012SQRL067), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81201907), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81272399), Research Fund for Doctor in Anhui Medical University (XJ201229).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hematology, Anhui Provincial Children’s Hospital, Hefei, 230051, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Zhe Xu

  2. Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Department of Biochemistry, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Sumei Zhang, Qing Zhou & Yuan Wang

  3. Department of Hematology, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Ruixiang Xia

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  1. Zhe Xu
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  2. Sumei Zhang
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  3. Qing Zhou
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  4. Yuan Wang
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  5. Ruixiang Xia
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Correspondence to Ruixiang Xia.

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Zhe Xu and Sumei Zhang have contributed equally to this work.

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Xu, Z., Zhang, S., Zhou, Q. et al. Endocan, a potential prognostic and diagnostic biomarker of acute leukemia. Mol Cell Biochem 395, 117–123 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11010-014-2117-0

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