Further, our western blot results clearly showed that the expression levels of B-cell survival molecules including phosphorylations of STAT1 and c-Fos, STAT1, NFATC2 and c-Myc increased significantly in CTLA4 downregulated (n = 5) CLL patient samples (Figure 2C and 2D). Here, CTLA4 is linked to B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia.