CO16 | Clinical and biological impact of plasma cytokine levels in newly diagnosed chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Introduction: In the context of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the impact of baseline cytokine levels on biological features and clinical outcomes remains poorly understood.Methods. Plasma from 244 newly diagnosed CLL patients was extracted and then analyzed using a bead-based 27-plex enzymatic assay. Different optimal cut-offs for overall survival (OS) and probability of Richter transformation (RT) risk analyses were defined using maximally selected rank statistics for every specific cytokine/chemokine. The machine-learning algorithms self-organizing map (SOM) and K-means were applied to divide patients into clusters based on cytokine/chemokine levels.Results. Median age at diagnosis was 68.9 years; 73 patients (29.9%) had unmutated immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (IGHV) genes, and 16 (6.6%) had TP53 disruption. After a median follow-up of 13.4 years, the median OS was 15.7 years. By correlating cytokines/chemokines with patient baseline clinical and molecular features, elevated MIP-1α levels were significantly associated with unmutated IGHV genes (p