The Role of QRSL1 in Clinical Subtypes and Prognosis of Childhood B-cell
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
Abstract
B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) is the most common leukemia
in the pediatric population, caused by a malignant clonal proliferation
of B lymphoid progenitor cells. Identifying new molecular markers
related to B-cell development is helpful for investing the pathogenesis
of B-ALL, and is potentially important for clinical prognosis. We found
that B cells showed the highest expression of glutaminyl-tRNA
amidotransferase subunit QRSL1 (QRSL1) compared with other cells during
the differentiation and development of hematopoietic stem cells and the
expression of QRSL1 also gradually increases with the development of
human fetal B-cell. Moreover, QRSL1 expression was higher in the tissues
and cell lines extracted from patients with B-ALL than in corresponding
control tissues. In the TARGET cohort, EFS and OS decreased in B-ALL
with high expression of QRSL1, suggesting that QRSL1 was an independent
prognostic factor. And high QRSL1 expression is associated with more
bone marrow sites of relapse and TCF3-PBX1 gene fusions. Then analyzing
the gene expression of the TCF3-PBX1 gene fusion subgroup, the
significantly different gene expression between the QRSL1
low group and QRSL1 high group
exhibited enrichment in cell development, suggesting that QRSL1 may
participate in leukemic cell development in childhood B-ALL. Therefore,
QRSL1 may be a molecule related to B cell development and is associated
with molecular subtypes of B-ALL. The high expression of QRSL1 is
associated with poor prognosis in patients with B-ALL, showing its
potential as a prognostic marker of B-ALL leukemia.