CEBPE expression is an independent prognostic factor for acute myeloid leukemia

BACKGROUND: Identifying reliable predictive markers is important to make therapeutic decisions, and determine the prognosis for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. However, approximately 50% patients could not be accurately predicted by existing risk factors. It is necessary to identify novel prognostic factors to subdivide the intermediate-risk group or patients without any cytogenetic and molecular abnormalities. METHODS: Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression were used for survival analyses in three independent AML datasets. Analyses integrating both bioinformatics and ChIP-qPCR experiments were performed to explore the role of CEBPE in regulating the expression of known prognostic factors. RESULTS: CEBPE expression was an independent predictor for both overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS) of AML patients. Moreover, low-expression of CEBPE was found to be associated with high relapse rate. We also proved that differential expression of CEBPE stratified the wild-type patients of multiple genes into good and poor outcomes. In addition, the results showed that no obvious improvement was achieved by allogeneic transplantation in CEBPE high-expressed group, while the survival rate (both OS and EFS) was significantly increased in transplanted patients that with low expression of CEBPE. Finally, we found that CEBPE might regulate the expression of known prognostic factors by localizing on their promoters. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicated that CEBPE expression was an independent prognostic factor for AML survival, relapse and allogeneic transplantation, which will provide useful information for outcome prediction and therapeutic decisions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12967-019-1944-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.