Characterisation of gene expression changes in T cells from patients presenting with AML compared with healthy T cells

Work previously published by our group has demonstrated that T cells from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) show differentially regulated genes compared with healthy T cells. This study was initiated to examine if these gene expression changes were unique to CLL T cells or common to an alternative leukaemia, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Keywords: Comparison of immune cells in health and disease The study was composed of four groups of samples: AML CD4 (n=10), AML CD8 (n=10), Healthy CD4 (n=10), Healthy CD8 (n=11). AML samples were chosen to represent the range of FAB types, prognostic groups and patient outcomes. Healthy T cells were obtained from volunteers. The purity of isolated T cell fractions was greater than 70% in all cases.