SIRT2 is an unfavorable prognostic biomarker in patients with acute myeloid leukemia

SIRT2 is a member of the NAD+ dependent deacetylases. In this study, the associations between SIRT2 expression and molecular and clinical characteristics of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were evaluated by data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. SIRT2 was overexpressed in the intermediate- and poor-risk groups of patients, compared to the favorable-risk group of patients (P = 0.002 and 0.004, respectively). High SIRT2 expression was associated with significantly shorter overall survival (OS; P = 0.0005) and event-free survival (EFS; P = 0.0002) than low SIRT2 expressio in a cohort of 167 patients with AML. Multivariate analyses revealed that high SIRT2 expression was associated with shorter OS (P = 0.031) and EFS (P = 0.020). Gene-expression profiling showed 259 differential expressed genes including CD4, CD14 and IL10. Gene sets like MAPK signaling pathway, VEGF signaling pathway and acute myeloid leukemia were upregulated in SIRT2(high) patients. We also found different methylation patterns in these two groups. OS and EFS of SIRT2(high) patients who did not undergo transplantation were significantly shorter than those of SIRT2(low) patients (P = 0.0120 and P = 0.0107, respectively). Taken together, these findings suggest that high SIRT2 expression is a novel and unfavorable prognostic biomarker for AML risk-stratification.