Small RNA sequencing of bone marrow from pediatric patients with acute myeloid leukemia and cord blood controls

Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (pedAML) is a heterogeneous blood cancer of childhood age. Although survival rates have significantly improved over the past decades, still 20-30% of children will succumb due to treatment-related toxicity or relapse. Molecular characterization of the leukemic stem cell, shown to be responsible for relapse, is needed to improve treatment options and survival. Recently, it became clear that non-coding RNAs, including long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) and microRNA (miRNA), play a role in the development of human diseases, including pediatric cancer. Nevertheless, non-coding RNA expression data in pedAML are scarce. Here, we explored lncRNA and miRNA expression in pedAML subpopulations (leukemic stem cells (LSC) and leukemic blasts (L-blast)) and their normal counterparts (hematopoeitic stem cells (HSC) and control myeloblasts (C-blast)). The study provides a catalog of non-coding RNAs with a potential role in the pathogenesis of pedAML, paving the way for further translational research studies. Overall design: We report the miRNA expression in cellular subpopulations of pedAML. To this end, RNA sequencing identified 2588 microRNAs of which 22 showed to be significantly differentially expressed in the LSC compared to the HSC and 60 in the L-blast to C-blast comparison.