The distinct expression features between chronic phase and B-lymphoblastic crisis samples from patients with CML

The blast phase (BP) in CML progressed from indolent chronic phase (CP), usually has a dismal outcome. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have identified the pretreatment features linked to therapy resistance and disease progression.

We performed the scRNA-seq on bone marrow cells derived from paired CML-CP and CML-BLBC samples, and found that CD24 displayed a striking upregulation in CML-BLBC samples when compared with both the CML-CP and Ph+ B-ALL samples, suggesting the potential as a target in the future therapy of patients with CML-BLBC. Therefore, we profiled the BM samples from patients with CML-CP (n = 16), CML-BLBC (n = 8), and de novo Ph+ B-ALL (n = 13) using bulk RNA sequencing to validate the upregulated expressio of CD24 in patients with CML-BLBC.