Primary Objective

Immunogenetic disease association studies may give rise to new hypotheses on the immunosurveillance of cancer. We hypothesized that certain combinations of killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) and HLA genotypes may enhance natural killer (NK) cell immunity against nascent acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and, thereby, lead to a skewed genotype distribution among patients. For this purpose, we analyzed KIR and HLA genotypes of 1,767 German patients with AML and compared the results with that of the data of 51,890 German volunteers who had registered with German bone marrow donor file (DKMS). We did not find significant differences between the two cohorts in regard to the presence or absence of single KIR genes. When grouped based on telomeric or centromeric gene content, the major haplotypes A/A, A/B, and B/B were equally distributed among patients and control subjects . The results suggest that the KIR/KIR-ligand genotype has no effect on the susceptibility for the development of de novo AML.

For further information please refer to the publication (doi: 10.1182/bloodadvances.2022008514).