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Molecular Targets for Therapy

MicroRNA miR-181a correlates with morphological sub-class of acute myeloid leukaemia and the expression of its target genes in global genome-wide analysis

Leukemia volume 21, pages 912–916 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short single-stranded RNAs that have a potentially important role in gene regulation. Using a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction assay specific to the mature miRNA, the expression level of a selected group of haematopoietic tissue-specific miRNAs was measured across a set of 30 primary adult acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) with a normal karyotype. The expression levels of each miRNA were correlated with the genome-wide mRNA expression profiles in the same leukaemias. This revealed that miR-181a correlated strongly with the AML morphological sub-type and with the expression of genes previously identified through sequence analysis as potential interaction targets. Three other miRNAs, miR-10a, miR-10b and miR-196a-1, showed a clear correlation with HOX gene expression.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge D Lillington for karyotype analysis and Professor TA Lister for clinical support. This work has been supported by grants from the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund and the Barts and London Charitable Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Oncology Department, Cancer Research UK, Barts and the London School of Medicine, Queen Mary College, Charterhouse Square, London, UK

    S Debernardi, S Skoulakis, G Molloy, T Chaplin, A Dixon-McIver & B D Young

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  1. S Debernardi
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  2. S Skoulakis
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  3. G Molloy
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  4. T Chaplin
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  5. A Dixon-McIver
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  6. B D Young
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Correspondence to B D Young.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Leukemia website (http://www.nature.com/leu)

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Debernardi, S., Skoulakis, S., Molloy, G. et al. MicroRNA miR-181a correlates with morphological sub-class of acute myeloid leukaemia and the expression of its target genes in global genome-wide analysis. Leukemia 21, 912–916 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404605

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