Recent work from our group showed that (i) serum levels of NGAL (derived from circulating CLL cells) are significantly elevated in untreated CLL patients [18], and (ii) NGAL-R (absent in normal B, T and myeloid compartments) is frequently overexpressed by CLL cells from untreated patients [18]. Here, SLC22A17 is linked to B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia.