Chemotherapy-induced bone marrow (BM) injury is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Time to hematologic recovery after standard (‘7+3’) myeloablative chemotherapy can vary considerably between patients, but the factors that drive or predict BM recovery remain incompletely understood. Here, we assessed the composition of innate and adaptive immune subsets in the regenerating BM (day 17) after induction chemotherapy and related it to hematologic recovery in AML. T cells, and in particular the CD4 central memory (CD4CM) T cell subset, were significantly enriched in the BM after chemotherapy, suggesting relative chemo-resistance of cells providing long-term memory for systemic pathogens. In contrast, B cells and other hematopoietic subsets were depleted. Higher frequencies of the CD4CM T cell subset were associated with delayed hematopoietic recovery, while a high frequency of NK cells related to faster recovery of neutrophil counts. The NK/CD4CM ratio in the BM after chemotherapy was significantly associated with the time to subsequent neutrophil recovery (Spearman’s ρ = -0.723, p < 0.001, FDR < 0.01). The data provide novel insights into adaptive immune cell recovery after injury and identify the NK/CD4CM index as a putative predictor of hematopoietic recovery in AML.
Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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