ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>This study was to investigate the expression of miR-10a in the different FAB subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and its relationship with drug resistance.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Forty de novo patients with AML, 16 patients with non-malignant hematologic disease and three AML cell lines HL-60, U937 and HL-60/ADR were enrolled in this study, the MiR-10a expression in bone marrow mononuclear cells of above-mentioned patients and 3 AML cell lines was detected by TaqMan RT-PCR. The correlation of miR-10a with clinicopathological factors of AML patients was analyzed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The miR-10a expression level in HL-60 cell line was higher than that in U937 cell line (P = 0.039). And its expression level in de novo AML patients was higher than that in patients with non-malignant hematologic disease (P < 0.01). FAB-AML-M3 patients exhibited higher expression of miR-10a than that in M1, M2 and M4 (P < 0.05); HL-60/ADR cell line showed higher miR-10a expression than that in HL-60 cell line (P < 0.01) . Except M3, the patients without CR (non-CR) after the first cycle of chemotherapy showed a higher level of miR-10a as compared with CR patients (P < 0.01).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The high expression of miR-10a may be closely related to over-proliferation of promyelocyte and drug resistance of acute myeloid leukemia cells, except M3.</p>