Increased expression of autophagy protein LC3 in patients with progressing chronic Lymphocytic leukemia

ARROYO, DS; MANZONE-RODRÍGUEZ, C; BAEZ, NS; RODRIGUEZ, CM; IRIBARREN, P

Congreso; Reunión Anual SAI; 2020

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common type ofadult leukemia in the western hemisphere. It is characterized bya clonal proliferation of a population of CD5+ B lymphocytes thataccumulate in the secondary lymphoid tissues, bone marrow, andblood. Some CLL patients remain free of symptoms for decades,whereas others rapidly become symptomatic or develop high-riskdisease. Studying autophagy, which may modulate key protein expressionand cell survival, may be important to the search for novelprognostic factors and molecules. Here, we applied flow cytometrytechnology to simultaneously detect autophagy protein LC3B withclassical phenotypical markers used for the identification of tumoralCLL B cell clones. We found that two patients with progressing CLLshowed increased expression of the autophagy protein LC3B, in additionto positive expression of CD38 and ZAP70 and unmutatedstatus of IGHV. Our data suggest that activation of autophagy fluxmay correlate with CLL progression even before Ibrutinib treatment