Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a heterogeneous group of clonal stem cell disorders with an inherent tendency for transformation in secondary acute myeloid leukemia. This study focused on the redox metabolism of bone marrow (BM) cells from 97 patients compared with 25 healthy controls. The level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was quantified by flow cytometry in BM cell subsets as well as the expression level of 28 transcripts encoding for major enzymes involved in the antioxidant cellular response. Our results highlight increased ROS levels in BM nonlymphoid cells and especially in primitive CD34posCD38low progenitor cells. Moreover, we identified a specific antioxidant signature, dubbed "antioxidogram," for the different MDS subgroups or secondary acute myeloblastic leukemia (sAML). Our results suggest that progression from MDS toward sAML could be characterized by 3 successive molecular steps: (1) overexpression of enzymes reducing proteic disulfide bonds (MDS with <5% BM blasts [GLRX family]); (2) increased expression of enzymes detoxifying H2O2 (MDS with 5% to 19% BM blasts [PRDX and GPX families]); and finally (3) decreased expression of these enzymes in sAML. The antioxidant score (AO-Score) defined by logistic regression from the expression levels of transcripts made it possible to stage disease progression and, interestingly, this AO-Score was independent of the revised International Scoring System. Altogether, this study demonstrates that MDS and sAML present an important disturbance of redox metabolism, especially in BM stem and progenitor cells and that the specific molecular antioxidant response parameters (antioxidogram, AO-Score) could be considered as useful biomarkers for disease diagnosis and follow-up.
© 2019 by The American Society of Hematology.