Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the major neoplasia type among children. Despite the tremendous success of current treatment strategies, drug resistance still remains a major cause of chemotherapy failure and relapse in pediatric patients. Overwhelming evidence illustrates that microRNAs (miRNAs) act as post-transcriptional regulators of drug-resistance-related genes. The current study was aimed at how dysregulated miRNA-mRNA-signaling pathway interaction networks mediate resistance to four commonly used chemotherapy agents in pediatric ALL, including asparaginase, daunorubicin, prednisolone, and vincristine. Using public expression microarray datasets, a holistic in silico approach was utilized to investigate candidate drug resistance miRNA-mRNA-signaling pathway interaction networks in pediatric ALL. Our systems biology approach nominated significant drug resistance and cross-resistance miRNAs, mRNAs, and cell signaling pathways based on anti-correlative relationship between miRNA and mRNA expression pattern. To sum up, our systemic analysis disclosed either a new potential role of miRNAs, or a possible mechanism of cellular drug resistance, in chemotherapy resistance of pediatric ALL. The current study may shed light on predicting drug response and overcoming drug resistance in childhood ALL for subsequent generations of chemotherapies.

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In the MTPA PCR technique, a new mismatch at -2 positions of outer primers and equal annealing temperature improve the genotyping procedure. Together, the introduced method could be suggested as a powerful tool for genotyping single-nucleotide mutations and polymorphisms.

In-silico investigation suggested a common variant within stem of miR-146a-5p precursor (rs2910164, n.60C>G) associated with breast cancer (BC) phenotypes. Our aim was computationally predicting possible targets of miR-146a-5p and probable rs2910164 mechanism of action in expression of phenotypes in BC. Additionally, a case-control study was designated to examine experimentally the correlation of mir-146a rs2910164 variant and BC phenotypes. In this study, 152 BC subjects and healthy controls were genotyped using RFLP-PCR. Allelic and genotypic association and Armitage's trend tests were run to investigate the correlation between the alleles and genotypes and expressed phenotypes of BC. Bioinformatics analyses introduce regulatory function of miR-146a-5p in numerous signaling pathways and impact of allele substitution upon mir-146a stem-loop stability. Logistic regression data represented the C allele of rs2910164 (OR = 4.00, p= 0.0037) as the risk allele and associated with Her2-positive phenotype. In a similar vein, data revealed the correlation of the C allele and cancer death less than two years in BC patients (OR = 2.65, p= 0.0217). Ultimately, unconditional logistical regression models suggested log-additive model for inheritance manner of rs2910164 in either Her2 status or BC survival (OR = 5.64, p= 0.0025 and OR = 3.13, p= 0.019, respectively). Using bioinformatics connected association of Her2 status to altered function of miR-146a-5p in regulation of focal adhesion and Ras pathway. Furthermore, computations inferred the association between death phenotype and studied SNP upon specific target genes of miR-146a-5p involved in focal adhesion, EGF receptor, Ras, ErbB, interleukin, Toll-like receptor, NGF, angiogenesis, and p53 feedback loops 2 signaling pathways. These verdicts may enhance our perceptions of how mir-146a rs2910164 affect expressed phenotypes in BC, and might have potential implications to develop BC treatment in future.

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