Evaluation of ATG7 and Light Chain 3 (LC3) Autophagy Genes Expression in Newly Diagnosed AML Patients

Autophagy, known as cell death type II, is a housekeeping pathway that currently has been worked on in matters of tumorigenesis and leukemogenesis. Therefore, in this study expression levels of ATG7 and LC3 as two key genes are targeted in AML patients. This study was performed on 55 de novo AML patients against 17 healthy volunteers, acquired samples from bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) sources in different ages and gender. The evaluation was executed by mRNA extraction, cDNA synthesis, real-time PCR and data was analyzed by SPSS. Analyzed data indicate a significant decrease between expression of ATG7 and LC3 in AML patients against control (Pv< 0.05). Decrease in both genes expression was detected in most of the patients, 81.81% and 75.55%, respectively. Also LC3 overexpression was detected in 11.33% of AML patients. Moreover, a positive significant correlation between ATG7 and LC3 genes was detected (r= 0.481; Pv= 0.001). This study showed that significant reduction of autophagy genes in de novo AML patients is important to overcome this system and initiate leukomogenesis. It seems a new insight is required for new achievements in diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and monitoring AML patients.