MicroRNAs characterize genetic diversity and drug resistance in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia
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ABSTRACT: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate activity of protein-coding genes including those involved in hematopoietic cancers. The goal of the current study was to explore which miRNAs are unique for seven different subtypes of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Therefore, the expression levels of 397 miRNAs (including novel miRNAs) were measured by quantitative RT-PCR in 81 pediatric leukemia cases and 17 normal hematopoietic control cases. Except for BCR-ABL-positive and B-other ALL, all major subtypes i.e. T-ALL, MLL-rearranged, TEL-AML1-positive, E2A-PBX1-positive and hyperdiploid ALL have unique miRNA-signatures that differ from each other and from those in healthy hematopoietic cells. Strikingly, the miRNA signature between TEL-AML1-positive and hyperdiploid cases partly overlapped, which suggests a common underlying biology. Moreover, aberrant downregulation of let-7b (~70-fold) in MLL-rearranged ALL was linked to upregulation of oncoprotein c-Myc (P<0.0001). Besides genetic aberrations, in vitro drug resistance predicts clinical outcome. Resistance to vincristine and daunorubicin was characterized by ~20-fold upregulation of miR-125b, miR-99a and miR-100 (P≤0.002). No discriminative miRNAs were found for prednisolone and only one miRNA was linked to L-asparaginase resistance. Finally we show that the expression levels of 14 miRNAs were --independently of subtype-- associated with clinical outcome in pediatric ALL. We conclude that genetic subtypes and drug resistant leukemic cells display characteristic miRNA signatures in pediatric ALL. Functional studies of discriminative and prognostic important miRNAs may provide new insights into the biology of disease. Experiment type: stem-loop real-time (RT) quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR)
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE23024 | GEO | 2011/02/11
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA131725
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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