Survivin’ Acute Myeloid Leukaemia—A Personalised Target for inv(16) Patients
, Elliott Brown 3, Lars Bullinger 4,5, Robert K. Hills 6, Vanessa Morris 3, Hartmut Döhner 2, Ken I. Mills 7 and Barbara-ann Guinn 3,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
See attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript has shown that survivin (BIRC5) plays a role in the survival of core-binding factor (CBF)-acute myeloid leukemia with inv(16)(p13.1q22)/ t(16;16), which leads to the formation of CBFB/MYH11 fusion gene. The inv(16) is one of the most frequent translocations in AML. It fuses core-binding factor beta to the C-terminus of a smooth muscle myosin heavy chain (SMMHC, also known as MYH11). High expression levels of BIRC5 correlated with worse survival in inv(16) AML patients with statistical significance when datasets of overall survival and disease-free survival were combined in Figure 4. On the contrary, decreased BIRC5 expression was associated with better clinical outcomes in CBF AML patients with inv(16). Therefore, AML patients with inv(16) could be candidates for personalized immunotherapies that target BIRC5. This is the very important result of this study even if about 90% of individuals with CBF AML recover from their disease following treatment, compared with 25-40% of those with other forms of AML.
