Quantitative Assessment of CK-18 Gene Expression in Patients Suffering from Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is one of the most common cancers. Its incidence has been increased during recent years and leads to high mortality if it is diagnosed late. Currently, most laboratory and diagnostic methods are difficult, cost- and time- consuming and this is the major obstacle to early detection of cancer. Cytokeratin 18 (CK18) is one of the cytoskeletal proteins which expression pattern change has been observed in various cancers. The present study investigates the altered expression of this gene at mRNA level in people who with recently diagnosed CML. In order to achieve this goal, blood samples were collected from 50 CML patients and 50 healthy individuals. Then, RNA extraction was performed and relative expression of CK-18 gene was measured by Real-time PCR. Data were analyzed by 2-ΔΔCT. Biomarker potential was evaluated by ROC curve. Results showed a 1.92-fold increase in the expression of CK-18 gene in leukemia samples compared to normal ones (p<0.05). No significant relationship was found between gender and changes in gene expression in case group. The results of this study elaborate that evaluation of CK-18 mRNA could be useful to detect CML along with other factors.