Quantitative assessment of wilms tumor 1 expression by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction in patients with acute myeloblastic leukemia

Background: the wilms tumor 1 (wt1) gene is originally defined as a tumor suppressor gene and a transcription factor that overexpressed in leukemic cells. it is highly expressed in more than 80% of acute myeloid leukemia (aml) patients,both in bone marrow (bm) and in peripheral blood (pb),and it is used as a powerful and independent marker of minimal residual disease (mrd);we have determined the expression levels of the wt1 by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (rq-pcr) in pb and bm in 126 newly diagnosed aml patients. materials and methods: this study was done in molecular pathology and cancer research center from april 2014 to june 2015,rq-pcr method was used to determine the wt1 gene expression in bm and/or pb samples from 126 patients of aml,we cloned both wt1 and abl genes for creating a standard curve,and we calculate copy number of wt1 genes in patients. results: a total of 126 aml patients consist of 70 males (55.6%) and 56 females (44.4%),with a median age of 26 years; 104 (81%) patients out of 126 show overexpression of wt1 gene. we also concomitant monitoring of fusion transcripts (pml rara,aml1-eto,mll-mll,cbfb-myh11,or dek-can) in our patients,the aml1-eto group showing remarkably low levels of wt1 compared with other fusion transcript and the cbfb-myh11 showing high levels of wt1. conclusion: we conclude that wt1 expression by rq-pcr in aml patients may be employed as an independent tool to detect mrd in the majority of normal karyotype aml patients. © 2017 journal of research in medical sciences.