Investigation of Expression Profile of Placenta-specific 1 (PLAC1) in Acute Myeloid  and Lymphoid Leukemias

Parastou  Gholami; Hossein  Asgarian-Omran; Marjan  Yaghmaie; Jafar  Mahmudian; Shirin  Kianersi; Sina  Salari; Ehsan  Zaboli; Mahmood  Jeddi-Tehrani; Amir-Hassan  Zarnani; Mahdi  Shabani

doi:10.18502/ajmb.v15i3.12926

Parastou Gholami Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Hossein Asgarian-Omran Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran
Marjan Yaghmaie Hematology-Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Jafar Mahmudian Monoclonal Antibody Research Center, Avicenna Research Institute, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
Shirin Kianersi HSCT Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Sina Salari HSCT Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Ehsan Zaboli Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Center, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran
Mahmood Jeddi-Tehrani Monoclonal Antibody Research Center, Avicenna Research Institute, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
Amir-Hassan Zarnani Department of Immunology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Mahdi Shabani Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/ajmb.v15i3.12926

Keywords: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Biomarker, Expression profile, Leukemia, PLAC1

Abstract

Background: Placenta-specific 1 (PLAC1) is one of the cancer-testis-placenta antigens that has no expression in normal tissue except placenta trophoblast and testicular germ cells, but is overexpressed in a variety of solid tumors. There is a lack of studies on the expression of PLAC1 in leukemia. We investigated expression of PLAC1 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).

Methods: In this study, we investigated expression pattern of PLAC1 gene in peripheral blood and bone marrow mononuclear cells of newly-diagnosed patients with AML (n=31) and ALL (n=31) using quantitative real-time PCR. Normal subjects (n=17) were considered as control. The PLAC1 protein expression in the samples were also detected using western blotting.

Results: Our data demonstrated that PLAC1 transcripts had 2.7 and 2.9 fold-change increase in AML and ALL, respectively, compared to normal samples. PLAC1 transcript expression was totally negative in all studied normal subjects. Level of PLAC1 mRNA expression in ALL statistically increased compared to normal samples (p=0.038). However, relative mRNA expression of PLAC1 in AML was not significant in comparison to normal subjects (p=0.848). Furthermore, relative mRNA expression of PLAC1 in AML subtypes was not statistically significant (p=0.756). PLAC1 gene expression showed no difference in demographical clinical and para-clinical parameters. Western blotting confirmed expression of PLAC1 in the ALL and AML samples.

Conclusion: Considering PLAC1 expression profile in acute leukemia, PLAC1 could be a potential marker in leukemia which needs complementary studies in the future.