High serum extracellular vesicle miR-10b expression predicts poor prognosis in patients with acute myeloid leukemia

BACKGROUND: Increasing evidence have demonstrated that serum extracellular vesicle microRNAs (EV-miRNAs) are promising noninvasive biomarkers for various cancer types. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aimed to investigate and evaluate the potential clinical significance of serum EV-miR-10b for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). METHODS: Blood samples were collected from a cohort of 95 de novo AML patients and 80 healthy individuals. Of all AML patients, 51 patients were considered as cytogenetic normal AML (CN-AML). Quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was performed to measure the expression levels of serum EV-miR-10b. RESULTS: The extracellular vesicles we extracted from the serum samples were positive for EV/exosome markers including TSG101, CD63, Flotillin-1 and CD9. The expression levels of serum EV-miR-10b were significantly higher in AML/CN-AML patients than healthy controls. In addition, serum EV-miR-10b expression was strongly correlated with aggressive clinical characteristics. Moreover, receiver operating characteristic analysis showed serum EV-miR-10b yielded an area under the curve of 0.875, with 77.89% specificity and 82.50% sensitivity in identifying AML patients from normal controls. Furthermore, AML patients with higher serum EV-miR-10b expression had significantly shorter survival and serum EV-miR-10b was demonstrated to be an independent prognostic marker for overall survival in AML. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, serum EV-miR-10b might serve as a promising biomarker for predicting the prognosis of AML.