Homozygosity for killer immunoglobin-like receptor haplotype A predicts complete molecular response to treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors in chronic myeloid leukemia patients.

Several recent reports suggest a possible role for killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) in the onset of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and response to therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). To explore this hypothesis, we studied KIRs and their human leukocyte antigen class I ligands in 59 consecutive patients with chronic-phase CML (mean age, 53 years; range, 23-81 years) and a group of 121 healthy control participants belonging to the same ethnic group as the patients. The 2-year cumulative incidence of complete molecular response, obtained after a median of 27 months (range, 4-52 months), was 51.