TRANSCRIPTOMIC STUDY REVEALS GENES AND BIOCHEMICAL PATHWAYS ASSOCIATED WITH CLINICAL EVOLUTION OF PATIENTS WITH CHILDHOOD ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA

ABBATE, MERCEDES; RUIZ, MARÍA SOL; RICCHERI, CECILIA; GUERON, GERALDINE; VAZQUEZ, ELBA; COTIGNOLA, JAVIER

Congreso; LXVI REUNIÓN ANUAL DE LA SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACIÓN CLÍNICA; 2021

SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACIÓN CLÍNICA

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most incident pediatric cancer. While considerable progress has been made on treatment efficacy and survival rates, about 15-30% of patients relapse and/or die. We aimed to identify gene-expression profiles in childhood ALL that could help better predict disease outcome, response to treatment and therapy-related toxicity. We collected 39 bone marrow samples at time of diagnosis of ALL from 3 hospitals from Argentina. Total RNA was isolated to perform transcriptome analysis (RNAseq). Clinico-pathological characteristics and disease outcome were evaluated and recorded by oncohematologists. We analyzed differential gene expression (DGE) and gene set variation analysis (GSVA) comparing: early response to prednisone, event-free survival, risks group, acute toxicity and minimal residual disease at day 15. We observed that about 30% of dysregulated genes were non-coding RNAs, being long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) the predominant biotype. We identified 6 differentially expressed pathways relevant to ALL biology (p