Prognostic significance of CD20 expression in childhood B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Jeha S, Behm F, Pei D, Sandlund JT, Ribeiro RC, Razzouk BI, Rubnitz JE, Hijiya N, Howard SC, Cheng C, Pui CH.
Department of Hematology-Oncology, St Jude Children's Research Hospital, 332 N Lauderdale St, Memphis, TN 38105, USA. sima.jeha@stjude.org

CD20 expression is associated with inferior survival in adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We analyzed the prognostic impact of CD20 expression in 353 children with B-cell precursor ALL treated in 3 consecutive St Jude Total Therapy studies. CD20 expression (> 20%) was found in 169 patients (48%) and was more frequent in patients between 1 and 10 years of age than in those younger than 1 or older than 10 years (P = .001). None of 14 patients with MLL-AF4 expressed CD20. There was no association between CD20 expression and E2A-PBX, TEL-AML1, ploidy, white blood cell count at diagnosis, or sex. In contrast to the experience in adult ALL, our patients with CD20 expression tended to have a better treatment outcome than those without the expression: 5-year event-free survival 84% +/- 2.9% versus 78% +/- 3.1% (P = .08). These data suggest that CD20 expression is not associated with inferior outcome in pediatric patients treated with contemporary regimens.

PMID: 16896151 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]