%0 Journal Article
%T The significance of low PU.1 expression in patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia
%A Xuehua Zhu
%A Hui Zhang
%A Maoxiang Qian
%A Xujie Zhao
%A Wentao Yang
%A Ping Wang
%A Ji Zhang
%A Kankan Wang
%J Journal of Hematology & Oncology
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1756-8722-5-22
%X We used real-time RT-PCR to compare PU.1 expression between de novo APL patient samples and normal blood specimens, and the results indicated that PU.1 expression was significantly lower in newly diagnosed APL patient samples as compared to normal hematopoietic cells. Further evidence showed a significant inverse correlation between the expression level of PML-RAR¦Á and that of PU.1. In addition, we analyzed the correlation between PML-RAR¦Á and PU.1 expression in a large population of AML patients retrieved from the expression profiles. The results showed that PU.1 expression was lower in patients with APL than other AML subtypes and there was also a trend towards increasing PU.1 expression from AML-M0 to AML-M5, with the exception of AML-M3 (APL). These observations suggested that PU.1 expression was reduced by PML-RAR¦Á in APL patients. Furthermore, we measured PU.1 expression in APL-initiating cells isolated from de novo APL patients by side population cell analysis and found that suppression of PU.1 expression occurred concurrently with PML-RAR¦Á expression, indicating the pivotal role of PU.1 in APL initiation.Our findings provide evidence that low PU.1 expression in APL patients is required for disease initiation and progression.
%K PML-RAR¦Á
%K PU.1
%K Acute promyelocytic leukemia
%U http://www.jhoonline.org/content/5/1/22/abstract