Expression of Nucleostemin Gene in Human Acute Leukemic Cells

摘要

Objective: To determine the expression of Nucleostemin (NS) gene in acute leukemic cells, and to probe into the correlation to NS gene and pathogenesis of acute leukemia. Methods: To screened out common sequence from three variants of NS gene and designed primers. NS gene expression was detected in HL60 and K562 leukemic cells by RT-PCR, then detected in acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML), acute monocytic leukemia (AM_OL), and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) respectively. The PCR product was a 418bp fragment. The same detection was performed in bone marrow mononuclear cells of control groups including normal human and benign anemia. Results: HL60, K562, and three groups of leukemic cells had a high level of NS gene expression, but the normal human group and benign anemia group couldn't be detected or had a minimal expression only. Compared with the internal standard of β-actin, the NS gene expression density scores of K562, HL60, M1+M2a, M3, M5a, M5b, and ALL was 0.735±0.26, 0.449±0.19, 0.687±0.21, 0.408±0.16, 0.866±0.27, 0.448±0.19, 0.403±0.19, respectively. The identical cell type leukemia, the NS gene level expressed by the cells in early stage of differentiation was obviously higher than those of the cells in later stage of differentiation, such as K562 expressed higher than HL60, M1+M2a higher than M3, and M5a higher than M5b (p < 0.01). Conclusion: NS gene overexpresses in acute leukemic cells, and it closely relates to the origination and development of leukemia. There are difference among the expression level of NS gene in the leukemic cells of different differentiation stage. These results suggest that the cancer cells and the stem cells have similarity in some aspects. Maybe NS gene is a potential target in treatment of leukemia.