J Cancer 2019; 10(1):178-185. doi:10.7150/jca.26391 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Department of Hematology, Huaihe Hospital of Henan University, Kaifeng, 475000, China
2. Translational Medicine Center, Huaihe Hospital of Henan University, Kaifeng, 475000, China
3. Department of Hematology and Lymphoma Research Center, Peking University, Third Hospital, Beijing, 100191, China
4. Department of Medicine, William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI 48073, USA
5. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, 100853, China
6. Department of Medical Big Data, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, 100853, China
It has been demonstrated that microRNA-98 (miR-98) is dysregulated in multiple types of solid tumors, but its expression and impact in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is unclear. To explore the prognostic role of miR-98 in AML, 164 AML patients with the miR-98 expression data were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and enrolled in this study. First, patients were divided into chemotherapy-only (chemotherapy) group and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HSCT) group. Each group was then divided in two groups by the median expression level of miR-98. In chemotherapy group, high miR-98 expression was associated with longer event-free survival (EFS, P = 0.003) and overall survival (OS, P = 0.004), but in allo-HSCT group, EFS and OS were not significantly different between high and low miR-98 expressers. Second, All patients were divided in two groups by the median expression level of miR-98. In low miR-98 expressers, those treated with allo-HSCT had longer EFS (P = 0.001) and OS (P < 0.001) than chemotherapy, but in high miR-98 expressers, survival was independent from treatment modalities. Gene ontology enrichment analysis indicated that the genes associated with miR-98 expression were mainly concentrated in “definitive hemopoiesis”, “negative regulation of myeloid cell differentiation” and “signaling pathways regulating pluripotency of stem cells” pathways. In conclusion, our results indicated that high miR-98 expression confers good prognosis in AML patients treated with chemotherapy alone. Patients with low miR-98 expression may benefit from allo-HSCT.
Keywords: Acute myeloid leukemia, MiR-98, Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, Chemotherapy, Prognosis