Expression profiling of some Acute Myeloid Leukemia - associated markers to assess their diagnostic / prognostic potential

Abstract

Investigating the etiological causes of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at the molecular level should help in identifying targets and strategies that would increase the efficacy of the current management regimens. Some genes may act as molecular diagnostics, of these ASXL1 and PHF6 are involved in regulation of gene expression, and BAX , and ARC, are pro- and anti-apoptotic molecules, respectively. In this study, peripheral blood samples were collected from 54 recently diagnosed AML patients in addition to 20 healthy individuals (the control group). Cellular RNA was extracted from all the samples and were subjected to quantitative analysis of the transcript levels of the four selected markers. Our data showed a significant elevation in the expression levels of PHF6 and ARC in AML patients, when compared to the controls (77.8% and 83.3%, respectively). On the other hand, ASXL1 and BAX exhibited increase, to a lesser extent, in the expression levels of the AML patients (52% and 55.6%, respectively). Our study also showed that the expression levels of ARC and PHF6 exhibited a concomitant increase and this could be correlated with poor prognosis of the cases. Thus, we can suggest these markers as reliable prognostic markers for prediction of AML outcomes.

Keywords:
AML; BAX; ARC; PHF6; ASXL1