Prognosis of vascular endothelial growth factor gene polymorphism in Egyptian patients with acute myeloid leukemia

Background Angiogenesis is an important process in hematological malignancies especially leukemia. Its role in acute leukemia has been discussed since the cloning of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene from acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). HL-60 is a human promyelocytic leukemia cell line. VEGF, a polymorphic gene, plays a key role in angiogenesis and tumor growth. Its different genotypes are associated with many human diseases. Increased angiogenesis, mediated by VEGF, was associated with poor prognosis in AML patients. AML that arises from neoplastic transformation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells remains one of the greater challenges in treating this AML. In adults, leukemia is included in the top 15 of the most common forms of cancer. Single-nucleotide polymorphism of the VEGF gene, 699947 is found in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of Iranian, Australian, Caucasian, and African patients with AML. The main target of this study is to investigate the relationship between VEGF gene polymorphism (rs699947) with AML. Patients and methods This a controlled study which included 100 and 76 individuals in each group, respectively. Group 1: a healthy control group and group 2: AML diagnosed patients. Blood samples were genotyped using the tetra-primer amplification-refractory mutation system-PCR and the results were confirmed by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Results Our results suggest that there is a correlation between rs699947 single-nucleotide polymorphism and AML development and prognosis. However, patients with −2578 AA/CC genotypes were associated with significant better complete remission in comparison to patients with −2578 CA genotype (P = 0.0001). We found that certain polymorphisms are associated significantly with remissions while others with worse response to induction chemotherapy.