CD38 and B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia: In addition to the interpatient relationship, a positive correlation between CD38 and NGAL-R was observed on CLL cells within individual patients, as illustrated in Figure 1b by two representative experiments: patient P31 exhibited low NGAL-R/CD38 co-expression (<10%), while patient P22 showed high NGAL-R/CD38 co-expression (>80%), which strongly suggests the colocalization of the two proteins at the cell level.