engleski

Protein expression and quantitative mRNA levels of Ikaros transcription factors in human leukemia

Transcription factors from the Ikaros family, Ikaros, Aiolos and Helios are of major importance during lymphocyte differentiation and a misbalance in their expression results in tumor development in mice. The aim of our study is to tackle the question whether a change in Ikaros expression is of relevance also for human leukemogenesis. We performed an extensive study of lymphocyte Ikaros mRNA expression in patients with B and T-cell acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. By means of RT-PCR analysis in most patients we found a variation in mRNA expression of all Ikaros family members, from undetectable to very high. We also were able to confirm the splicing variants expression in 5 out of 35 patients tested. These results confirmed that similarly to the KO mice experimental model, also in human malignancies there are detectable differences in Ikaros expression. Therefore we further analyzed the total amount of mRNA by real time PCR to look for a quantitative difference in Ikaros expression in leukemia patients. By means of flow cytometry with antibodies for both cell surface and intracellular proteins we determined the developmental stage of malignant cells and correlated it with Ikaros protein expression. In conclusion we show here that Ikaros family members are relevant for diagnostics and prognostics of leukemia patients.

Transcription factors ; Ikaros family ; ALL ; CLL

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