Cell Journal (Jan 2010)
Evaluation of Morpholino Antisense Oligos’ Role on BCR-ABL Gene Silencing in the K562 Cell Line
Abstract
Objective: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) develops when a hematopoietic stem cellacquires the BCR/ABL fusion gene. This causes these transformed hematopoietic cellsto have a greater than normal proliferation rate. Scientists attempt to improve the CMLtreatment process by silencing the BCR/ABL oncogene. In this work, we used morpholinoantisense oligos to silence the BCR/ABL oncogene.Materials and Methods: In this study, the K562 was used as a BCR/ABL fusion-genepositive cell line and the Jurkat cell line as a control. We explored the inhibiting capacityof morpholino antisense oligos in the the expression of the BCR/ABL oncogene andstudied their p210 BCR/ABL suppression, inhibition of cell proliferation and stimulation ofapoptosis in the K562 cells after 24 and 48 hours. Endo-Porter was used for delivery ofmorpholino antisense oligos into cell cytosols. Meanwhile, flow cytometric analysis wasperformed in order to determine the appropriate concentration of morpholino antisenseoligos.Results: Prolonged exposure of the K562 cell line to the morpholino antisense oligostargeted against the BCR-ABL gene showed proliferation inhibition as its main feature.After western blotting, we found that complete silencing of BCR/ABL was achieved, butflow cytometric analysis showed no broad apoptosis.Conclusion: The results indicate that the Morpholino antisense oligo is able to inhibitp210 BCR/ABL; however, it cannot induce broad apoptosis due to co-silencing of BCR.
