Plasma exosome-derived microRNA-532 as a novel predictor for acute myeloid leukemia.

BACKGROUND: The interest in plasma biomarkers has increased recently. Plasma exosome-derived microRNA-532 is aberrantly expressed in a variety of human cancers and has the prognostic value in many solid tumors. However, the prognostic impact of the expression value on AML remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the prognostic value of exosome-derived microRNA-532 in AML patients. METHODS: We performed the real-time PCR to quantify exosome-derived microRNA-532 in plasma of 198 AML patients. To assess the prognostic value, we performed Cox regression analyses in the context of well-established clinical and molecular markers. Cellular metabolic profile was conducted to help us understand the biological insight of its expression. RESULTS: The expression level was not associated with white blood cell counts, age, FAB subtypes, cytogenetic risk groups and genes of FLT3-ITD, NPM1, CEBPA and DNMT3A mutations. Interestingly, high expressers had a favorable overall survival in the univariate analysis. This prognostic value was testified in the multivariate analysis. Moreover, up-regulation of miR-532 was negatively associated with cellular energy like fructose and glutamine. CONCLUSION: We found plasma exosome-derived microRNA-532 can be used as a novel survival predictor for acute myeloid leukemia.