Gene expression signature of Anagrelide in megakaryocytes

Anagrelide is a cytoreductive agent used to lower platelet counts in essential thrombocythemia. Although the drug is known to selectively inhibit megakaryopoiesis, the molecular mechanism accounting for this activity has not been elucidated. In order to gain an insight into the mechanism of action of this drug we used microarrays to obtain a global gene expression signature of anagrelide CD34+ human hematopoietic cells from three different donors (biological replicates 1, 2 & 3) were treated ex vivo for four days with anagrelide (TPO-ANA) or with an equivalent amount of vehicle (TPO-DMSO) while growing under megakaryocyte differentiation conditions. Total RNA was then extracted with RNeasy reagent and subjected to gene expression profiling on Affimetrix Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 oligonucleotide chips.