Lipidomic analysis of B-cells isolated from the bone marrow and peripheral blood of CLL patients and healthy controls: Poster Id: 332

Introduction: Lipids not only play an integral role as building blocks of our cell membranes, they are also important in other cellular functions such as energy
storage, cellular communication and intracellular signalling (Muro et al., 2014). They have been associated with playing a role in the onset and progression of
disease, including in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), however the details of this role are yet to be determined (reviewed in (Rozovski et al., 2016)). It is known that lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme which plays a central role in lipid metabolism, is overexpressed in B-CLL cells (Heintel et al., 2005), which is puzzling as its expression is normally restricted to adipose tissue as well as cardiac and skeletal muscles (Mead et al., 2002)). Further investigations into lipid alterations and metabolism at a global level in CLL may be beneficial to understanding the molecular differences that occur not only between healthy B-cells and B-CLL cells, but also between different subsets of CLL patients (for example, aggressive vs indolent disease). Furthermore, discordant lipid expression may correlate with treatment effectiveness as it has been shown that fluctuating levels of key lipids can contribute to chemotherapy resistance (e.g. (Gorin et al., 2012, Qiu et al., 2015)).