Prognostic Relevance of a Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm-like Immunophenotype in Cytogenetically Normal Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) is a poor prognosis myeloid malignancy characterized by an atypical phenotype (CD123+, CD56+, and CD4+). We reported that BPDCN-like phenotype (CD123+ and either CD56+ or CD4+ or both) confers poor prognosis to acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) patients with mutated NPM1. Here, we evaluated the incidence and the prognostic relevance of BPDCN-like phenotype in cytogenetically normal AML (CN-AML) patients. From 2006 to 2016, 83 young (age <60 yrs), consecutive, CN-AML patients underwent intensive treatment. Fifteen patients (18%) showed a BPDCN-like phenotype with no difference between -mutated (mut) and -wt patients. It did not significantly affect survival neither in the whole cohort, nor in -wt patients. However, as reported, it conferred a dismal prognosis in -mut AML ( < 0.001), irrespectively of the mutational status for FLT3-ITD. In conclusion we show that BPDCN-like phenotype displays a negative prognostic relevance only in -mutated AML.