MicroRNA 30a Mediated Autophagy and Imatinib Response in Egyptian Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Imatinib Mesylate is the drug used for targeted tyrosine kinase inhibition in the beginning of management of all Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) newly diagnosed cases. However, resistance presents a considerable limit to its efficacy. Currently, it is impossible to anticipate IM resistance which makes the recognition of early flags an important treatment goal in CML. In this work we studied the connection between microRNA 30a (miR-30a) and Beclin 1 mediated autophagy and IM resistance in Egyptian CML patients. The study included newly diagnosed (group I, n = 20), imatinib responder (group II, n = 30), imatinib resistant (group III, n = 30) CML patients and a healthy demographically matched control group (group IV, n = 20). miR-30a expression was assayed by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. The variation in expression of miR-30a between CML cases and healthy controls was calculated using relative quantification method (2^−ΔΔCT). Beclin 1 was assayed in Peripheral blood mononuclear cells by western blotting. miR-30a was over expressed and Beclin 1 was under expressed in imatinib responders compared to resistant cases median 1.21(0.55–3.02) versus median 0.65 (0.03–1.0) (p = 0.001) and median 950.0 (400.0–2410.0) versus, median 1570.0 (920.0–5430.0) (p < 0.001) respectively. Beclin 1 correlated significantly positively with miR-30a in new cases (p = 0.001) and negatively in imatinib responders (p = 0.021). Receiver Operating Curves demonstrated the performances of miR-30a and Beclin 1 to detect imatinib resistance. They showed sensitivities of 97.14% and 94.29% and specificities of 53.33% and 42.22% at the cut-off values of 1 and 940 respectively. Both miR-30a and Beclin 1 levels showed a relation with imatinib response and can therefore be put forward as valuable markers for detection of resistance and may also have promising future therapeutic implications.