The expression of mRNA of survivin in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

ABSTRACT The expression of mRNA of survivin in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia Apoptosis, an active suicidal response to different physiological or pathological stimuli, plays an important role in a variety of biological events, including morphogenesis, homeostatic maintenance of diffferent tissues and removal of harmful cells. Aberrations in the mechanism of apoptosis lead to autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative disorders and carcinogenesis. Survivin is a recently described member of the family of inhibition of apoptosis protein. It inhibits apoptosis induced by chemotherapeutic agents, Fas, and caspases. It is shown that it is overexpressed in the most common human cancers. In this study, 25 cases with ALL at the ages of 2-14 years are included, the average age was 7,7 years in the patients. The age distribition of the control group varied 1-19 years, the average age was 8,4 years consisted of 13 children. Diagnostic aspiration material from bone marrow samples of the patients the average of survivin mRNA expression was 652,2 copy/104 cells. The statistical comparison of the average values of the ALL patients and control group have shown important difference statistically (p=0,013). Survivin mRNA expression value was found to be important for the expected survival time. As a result, survivin is thought to be an important prognostic parameter in hildren with ALL. Key words: ALL, apoptosis, survivin rx