• Investigating the Effect of Cytarabine chemotherapy drug on Expression Changes of LncRNA NKILA in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
  • Sahar Eskandari,1 Golnaz Asaadi Tehrani,2,* Sina Mirza Ahmadi,3


  • Introduction: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is a type of blood cancer that develops in the bone marrow from young white blood cells called lymphocytes. It can affect both adults and children, but it is most commonly diagnosed in children. This study aimed to see how Cytarabine, a chemotherapy drug, affected LncRNA NKILA expression in an acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line (E6.1 Jurkat).
  • Methods: we examined two doses of 1 and 5µM of Cytarabine chemotherapy drug in this study. At 24 hours after cell passage, the Jurkat E6.1 cell line was treated with prepared doses of Cytarabine. After RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis, the expression changes of LncRNA NKILA and GAPDH (the reference gene), were investigated by Real-Time PCR. Finally, the data were analyzed by Rest 2002 Software, and the diagrams were created by Excel.
  • Results: Our outcomes revealed that the expression changes of LncRNA NKILA compared to the housekeeping gene (GAPDH) were significantly increased after 24 hours of treatment with Cytarabine at 5µM. According to the findings, a concentration of 5µM at a time of 24 hours was the best dose and time. At 24 hours, the expressions of LncRNA NKILA at doses of 1 and 5 µM were 0/829 and 1/024 respectively. (P <0.001)
  • Conclusion: According to the results of the study, LncRNA NKILA expression changes after treatment with Cytarabine in concentrations of 5µM were effective in upregulation of LncRNA NKILA expression with a rate of 1/024. Generally, in 24 hours, Cytarabine had a positive effect on the LncRNA NKILA Tumor suppressor gene decrease mechanism, and this increase in expressions was statistically significant (p-value< 0.001).
  • Keywords: NKILA, Cytarabine, GAPDH, cDNA