Upregulation of HOTAIR Predicts Poor Outcome in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a clonal hematopoietic malignancy, in spite of the marked improvement in the treatment of AML; Molecular biomarkers open the door to improve disease outcome. Accumulating evidence suggested that the long non-coding RNA “HOTAIR” has an oncogenic role in hemopoietic malignancies. Recently, it has been evident that knockdown of HOTAIR inhibits cell proliferation and induces apoptosis by modulating c-Kit expression via acting as competing for endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) to sponge miR-193a at the post-transcriptional level. Objectives: we aimed to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic value of HOTAIR in AML, to investigate its association with and c-Kit and miR-193a. Subjects & Methods: we examined the expression levels of HOTAIR, miR-193a, and c-Kit in 100 de-novo AML patients using quantitative, the association of genes expressions with risk factors and patient’s outcome were statistically analyzed. Results: the expression of HOTAIR was significantly upregulated by four folds in AML compared to healthy controls; higher expression levels were associated with high-risk factors, poorer overall survival (OS) and shorter leukemia-free survival (LFS). In addition; a negative correlation was detected between Lnc-HOTAIR and miR-193a, although significance didn’t reach. Conclusion: The obtained results suggested that HOTAIR expression was upregulated in peripheral blood samples of de-novo AML patients and was associated with leukemic burden and disease outcome. Therefore, it may represent an effective diagnostic and poor prognostic tool for AML.