Proteomics: the key to understanding AML hematopoietic aging

In this issue of Blood, Cheng et al 1 integrate genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and phosphoproteomic measurements of 374 patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) to describe a protein signature of hematopoietic aging that can be used to both understand why AML is so deadly in older patients and to stratify patients by disease severity.Despite the recent popularity of proteogenomic data in AML, this study highlights how a deep molecular profiling approach can uncover novel disease mechanisms and provide new insight into why AML is so deadly, particularly in older patients. 2