Coding and noncoding gene expression of 48 pediatric AML samples

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and miRNAs have emerged as crucial regulators of gene expression and cell fate decisions. Here we present an integrated analysis of the ncRNA-transcriptome of purified human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their differentiated progenies, including granulocytes, monocytes, T-cells, NK-cells, B-cells, megakaryocytes and erythroid precursors, which we correlated with the ncRNA expression profile of 48 pediatric AML samples to establish a core lncRNA stem cell signature in AML.Linear (PCA) and nonlinear (t-SNE) dimensionality reduction of 46 pediatric AML samples including Down syndrome AMKL, core-binding factor AMLs (inv[16] or t[8;21]) and MLL-rearranged leukemias mapped most samples to a space between HSCs and differentiated cells together with the myeloid progenitors. A subset of AML-samples mapped closely to healthy HSCs, including most of the DS-AMKLs and MLL-AMLs. Following the incorporation of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) samples into the landscape, we further uncover prognostically relevant ncRNA stem cell signatures shared between AML blasts and healthy hematopoietic stem cells. AML blasts from 48 pediatric AML samples were FACS-purified and total RNA was subjected to Microarray Analysis on the Arraystar Human LncRNA microarray V2.0 (Agilent-033010) platform