Lower Serum miR-145 Predicts Poor Prognosis in Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

BACKGROUND: The current study mainly aims to evaluate the role and clinical significance of miR-145 in the progression of AML. METHODS: Serum and bone marrow nucleated cells (BMNc) were collected and the level of miR-145 was detected by RT-PCR. Pearson's correlation assay was carried out to analyze the correlation between serum miR-145 and clinical index. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed to determine the diagnosis value of serum miR-145. RESULTS: MiR-145 was significantly decreased in serum and BMNc of patients with AML compared with the control group. Pearson's correlation assay showed that serum miR-145 was positively correlated with miR-145 levels in BMNc. Further study showed that the level of serum miR-145 was much lower in AML patients with initial WBC count ≥ 50 x 109/L than that of WBC count < 50 x 109/L. Moreover, the level of serum miR-145 in prednisone poor responders was significantly lower than that in prednisone good responders. Compared with minimal residual disease (MRD) < 0.01% group, serum miR-145 was much lower in AML patients with MRD ≥ 0.01% group. Pearson's correlation analysis showed that serum miR-145 was positively correlated with MRD. In addition, miR-145 diagnosed AML with an AUC of 0.915 (95% confidence interval: 0.828 to 1.000; p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The level of miR-145 in serum and BMNc of AML patients was significantly lower than those of the control group. Serum miR-145 was related to poor prognosis and disease recurrence of AML.

MAFG-AS1 is a novel clinical biomarker for clinical progression and unfavorable prognosis in gastric cancer.

MAFG antisense 1 (MAFG-AS1) is recently identified as a novel lncRNA and serves as a tumor promoter in several types of human tumor. However, no prior study has been performed to evaluate the role of MAFG-AS1 in gastric cancer. In our study, we found MAFG-AS1 expression was increased in gastric cancer tissue samples compared with normal gastric mucosa tissue samples, and associated with poor overall survival in gastric cancer patients at The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Furthermore, we confirmed the clinical and prognostic significance of MAFG-AS1 in gastric cancer. We found gastric cancer tissues and cell lines had remarkably increased MAFG-AS1 expression in comparison to normal gastric mucosa tissues and normal human gastric epithelial cell line, and high MAFG-AS1 expression was positively associated with diffuse type, advanced clinical stage, extensive depth of invasion, more lymph node metastasis, and present distant metastasis in gastric cancer patients. Moreover, high MAFG-AS1 expression acted as one of the independent poor prognostic factors for overall survival in gastric cancer patients. The loss-of-function study showed knocking down MAFG-AS1 expression inhibited gastric cancer cell proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro. In conclusion, MAFG-AS1 is probable to be a valuable prognostic biomarker, and a novel potential target for gastric cancer.