Evaluation of HOTAIR, HOXD8, HOXD9, HOXD11 Gene Expression Levels in Turkish Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: A Single Center Experience

BACKGRAUND Homeobox (HOX) transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) and HOX genes are reported to be more expressed in various cancers in humans in recent studies. The role of HOTAIR and HOXD genes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is not well known. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study, expression levels of HOXD8 , HOXD9 and HOXD11 from HOXD gene family and HOTAIR were determined from peripheral blood samples of 30 AML and 30 CML patients and 20 healthy volunteers by quantitative Real Time PCR. RESULTS We determined that the expression levels of HOXD9 and HOXD11 in the AML patients were significantly lower than the control group (p<0.001 and p=0.002, respectively). There was no significant difference in the expression levels of HOTAIR and HOXD8 when compared to the control group. In the CML patients there was a significant increase in the expression level of HOTAIR when compared to the control group (p=0.002). The expression levels of HOXD9 and HOXD11 were found to be significantly lower than the control group (p<0.001). CONCLUSION Our study showed that HOTAIR may not be a biomarker in the diagnosis and is not significantly correlated with the clinicopathological prognostic characteristics of AML. Additionally; it can be said that HOTAIR is oncogenic by suppressing the expression of HOXD9 and HOXD11 but not HOXD8 in CML patients. The expression profiles of HOTAIR may be a potential biomarker in the diagnosis of CML patients in predicting and monitoring drug resistance. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study was funded by grants from Erciyes University Scientific Research Projects BAP Unit as TYL-2016-6245 project. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Ethics Committee of Erciyes University Faculty of Medicine gave ethical approval for this work (Approval number: 2015/222, Decision date: 08/05/2015). I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present work are contained in the manuscript