Summary
The association of coagulation factors with leukocytes have been demonstrated in several
previous studies. This study was designed to study the sensitivity and specificity
of factor XIII subunit A (FXIII-A) labelling in cultured myeloblastic and monoblastic
cell lines and to investigate the intracytoplasmic expression of FXIII-A in de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) samples. Myeloblastic and a monoblastic cell lines were
cultured and investigated for lineage specific maturation markers and FXIII-A expression.
Furthermore, FXIII-A expression was investigated in 12 normal samples (7 bone marrow
and 5 peripheral blood), 86 de novo AML samples and 6 chronic myelomonocytic leukemia
(CMML) samples. In the monoblastic MonoMac6 cell line the appearance of FXIII-A preceded
that of CD14 while it remained negative in the myeloblastic PLB-985 cell line throughout
its maturation period. Among the AML samples the average frequency of FXIII-A positive
cells in myeloblastic leukemia samples was below 10%,while in M4 and M5AML samples
it was above 50% and was significantly higher than the generally used CD14 marker
(p < 0.0001). In the AML M4 and M5 cases, FXIII-A proved sensitive for the identification
of monoblasts.FXIII-A can be considered as a reliable intracytoplasmic marker for
the monocytic and megakaryocytic series and its presence is highly predictive for
mono- and megakaryocytic AML and for CMML
Keywords
Factor XIII - flow cytometry - acute myeloid leukemia classification