title: Neoplastic circulating endothelial-like cells in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia.
abstract: Accumulating evidence suggests that angiogenesis may play a key role in the pathogenesis of leukaemic disorders. Several studies have shown that bone marrow-derived endothelial cells (EC) may contribute to tumour angiogenesis and that in the peripheral blood of cancer patients there is an increased amount of circulating ECs (CECs) that may participate to new vessel formation. In this report, we showed that, in seven acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients with known cytogenetic abnormalities, CEC levels were significantly increased in comparison with controls and that a significant proportion of these CECs carried the same chromosomal aberration as blast cells (20-78%, mean value 42.1% of CECs). Most of CECs (mean value 74.4%) displayed immunophenotypic features of endothelial progenitor cells as they expressed CD133, a marker gradually lost during EC differentiation and absent on mature EC. These findings suggest a possible direct contribution of AML-related CECs to tumour vasculogenesis and possibly to the spreading and progression of the disease.
authors: Haematology Section, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Arcispedale S.Anna, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy. rglgmt@unife.it
authors: Gian Matteo
authors: GM
authors: Rigolin
authors: Endri
authors: E
authors: Mauro
authors: Maria
authors: M
authors: Ciccone
authors: Chiara
authors: C
authors: Fraulini
authors: Olga
authors: O
authors: Sofritti
authors: Gianluigi
authors: G
authors: Castoldi
authors: Antonio
authors: A
authors: Cuneo
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D004730:Endothelium, Vascular / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence; D007951:Leukemia, Myeloid / Q000097:blood*; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating