Prominin-1 is a helpful prognostic marker in patients with ALL; therefore, it should be routinely assessed at diagnosis in ALL patients for better prognostic assessment and should be taken in consideration in designing future therapeutic strategies based on patient-specific risk factors.
In concordance, gene expression profiles of 86 T-ALL patients revealed upregulation of stem cell markers (CD34 and CD133) as well as genes associated with poor outcome and pathogenesis of leukemia (MN1, BAALC, FLT3) in the high IGFBP7 expression group.
U87CS cells presented positive immunohistochemical staining for multidrug resistance (MDR)1 and CD133, a marker for a subset of leukemia and GBM CS cells.
Confining the gamma-retroviral transduction to CD133-positive cells on days 3 and 4 could greatly reduce the number of transplanted vector copies, limiting the risk of leukemia from insertional mutagenesis.