TY - JOUR AU - Maria Ilaria Del Principe, AU - Michele Dal Bo, AU - Tamara Bittolo, AU - Francesco Buccisano, AU - Francesca Maria Rossi, AU - Antonella Zucchetto, AU - Davide Rossi, AU - Riccardo Bomben, AU - Luca Maurillo, AU - Mariagiovanna Cefalo, AU - Giovanna De Santis, AU - Adriano Venditti, AU - Gianluca Gaidano, AU - Sergio Amadori, AU - Paolo de Fabritiis, AU - Valter Gattei, AU - Giovanni Del Poeta, PY - 2015/12/31 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Clinical significance of bax/bcl-2 ratio in chronic lymphocytic leukemia JF - Haematologica JA - haematol VL - 101 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.3324/haematol.2015.131854 UR - https://haematologica.org/article/view/7609 SP - 77-85 AB - In chronic lymphocytic leukemia the balance between the pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic members of the bcl-2 family is involved in the pathogenesis, chemorefractoriness and clinical outcome. Moreover, the recently proposed anti-bcl-2 molecules, such as ABT-199, have emphasized the potential role of of bcl-2 family proteins in the context of target therapies. We investigated bax/bcl-2 ratio by flow cytometry in 502 patients and identified a cut off of 1.50 to correlate bax/bcl-2 ratio with well-established clinical and biological prognosticators. Bax/bcl-2 was 1.50 or over in 263 patients (52%) with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Higher bax/bcl-2 was associated with low Rai stage, lymphocyte doubling time over 12 months, beta-2 microglobulin less than 2.2 mg/dL, soluble CD23 less than 70 U/mL and a low risk cytogenetic profile (P