Expressions of survivin and cyclin B1 gene in childhood acute leukemia

    TAN Liª²Zhen1, LIU Zhuang2

    1Department of Oncology, Liuzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Liuzhou 545001, China, 2Department of Pediatrics, First Affiliated Hospital, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To investigate the expressions and significance of survivin and cyclin B1 gene in childhood acute leukemia (AL). METHODS: The expressions of survivin and cyclin B1 gene were examined by RTª²PCR in bone marrow cells from 42 children with incipient or relapsed AL£¬ 13 with completely remissive AL (ALª²CR) and 15 without malignant disease as a control group. RESULTS: In incipient and relapsed AL groups, the expression level of survivin were 0.472 and 0.810, cyclin B1 were 0.606 and 0.739, which were remarkably higher than those in control group and ALª²CR group (P<0.01). There was a significantly difference between incipient AL group and relapsed AL group in the expression level of survivin mRNA (P=0.025). The expression of survivin gene was associated with initial white blood cell (WBC) count and clinical types of AL. The expression of cyclin B1 gene was not correlated with age, sex, immunogenic type, initial WBC count and clinical types of AL. There was a significantly positive correlation between the expression of survivin gene and cyclin B1 in Childhood AL (r=0.6864, P<0.01). Patients with high survivin expression level achieved a lower rate of complete remission (CR) than those with low expression level of survivin. CONCLUSION£º Survivin and cyclin B1 gene are expressed widely in specimens of AL, and there is a positive correlation between them. Overexpression of survivin may imply the lower sensitivity of the leukemic cells to chemotherapy and the higher risk of relapse. Overexpression of survivin might be an index of treatment effect, and might be related to poor prognosis. ......