Issue Highlights-January 2013

To date, the diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with monocytic differentiation was limited by the lack of highly sensitive and specific monocytic markers. Over the last 2 decades, several immunophenotypic markers (lysozyme, elastase, UPA-R, GM-CSF-R, among others) were found to be preferentially expressed by cells belonging to the monocytic lineage, but unfortunately none of them allowed the easy recognition of the pure M5 FAB subvariety of AML.ILT3 is an immune inhibitory receptor expressed by myelomono- cytic cells and at high levels by tolerogenic dendritic cells, making it feasible to be incorporated into the initial diagnostic work-up and monitoring of patients with AML. However, the diagnostic usefulness of this pheno- typic marker for the recognition of the monocytic variant of AML needs to be validated in larger series of patients.