Evalution of Programmed Cell Death 4 (PDCD4) Expression in Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is clinically, cytogenetically, and molecularly heterogeneous. Advances in molecular research have greatly improved our understanding of the leukemogenesis in AML. Programmed cell death-4 (PDCD4) is a novel tumor suppressor that inhibits neoplastic transformation and tumor progression and invasion by suppressing activator protein (AP)-1 activation and protein translation. In the present study, we examined the PDCD4 expression levels in de novo AML and investigated correlation between altered expression of PDCD4 with patients’ clinical characteristics. Methods: Peripheral blood samples were collected from 56 patients with AML at the time of diagnosis and also, 10 healthy individuals. Quantification of PDCD4 mRNA expression by Real Time Quantitative PCR was performed. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare PDCD4 expression differences among healthy and AML samples. Findings: PDCD4 mRNA expression was significantly diminished in patients with AML at diagnosis in comparison to the PB as normal samples (P < 0.001). We observed a statistically lower expression in AML-M5 subtype in comparison to other AML subtypes (P = 0.028) .We have not found any significant correlation between PDCD4 expression level and clinical parameters of patients. Also, no significant correlation between the expression levels of PDCD4 and complete remission after induction therapy was observed. Conclusion: Our results shown that, like many epithelial cancers, the down-regulation of PDCD4 expression also occurs in AML.

Keywords

• Acute myeloid leukemia
• Programmed cell death-4
• Tumor suppressor gene