Background: Nucleolin (NCL) is a multifunctional nucleolar DNAand RNA-binding protein involved in multiple intracellular processes -including chromatin remodeling, DNA recombination and replication, rRNA synthesis and processing, and mRNA transcription and metabolism -, several of which are dysregulated in hematologic malignancies. It is overexpressed on the cytoplasm and cell surface of highly proliferative cells, including several solid tumors, such as gastric, colorectal, breast, lung and hepatocellular carcinomas, and gliomas and ependymomas. In these neoplasms, overexpression increases with histologic grade, metastatic potential and clinical stage, and is a biomolecular marker of event-free survival (EFS), relapse-free survival and overall survival (OS). NCL is also overexpressed in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) blast cells, and upregulates oncogenes and downregulates tumor suppressors in both acute and chronic leukemias. In a small heterogeneous set of AML patients (pts), higher levels of NCL were found to associate with decreased OS, a finding that was echoed in a small series of diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) pts. The prognostic (Px) value of NCL overexpression in other hematologic neoplasms is unclear.