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Expression of a human endogenous retrovirus, HERV-K, in the blood cells of leukemia patients

Leukemia volume 16, pages 254–259 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Human endogenous retroviral sequences (HERVs) are believed to be possible pathogenic agents in carcinogenesis. HERV-K is the most biologically active form, since members of this family have intact open reading frames for the gag, pol or envgenes. Antibody response against HERV-K peptides has been reported in leukemia patients, suggesting a possible overexpression of this sequence in leukemic cells. Using real-time quantitative RT-PCR (TaqMan), we found that in six of the eight leukemia samples we collected, transcriptional activity of HERV-K10-like gag gene was 5- to 10-fold higher than in normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) or mononuclear cells from cord blood. The overexpression was marked enough to be detected by Northern blot. In addition, there was no significant variation of HERV-K expression in normal PBMCs after exposure to different factors (PHA, gamma irradiation, 5-azacytidine) that potentially modulate HERV expression. This suggests that HERV-K relative overexpression in leukemia samples might be specifically associated with tumor development. The origin of these transcriptional variations is therefore worth being investigated further.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Service Commun de l'IFR 22 for access to the ABI PRISM 7700, and in particular Nathalie Jouy for her help with the quantitative method. We also thank the Service des Maladies du Sang du CHU de Lille for its participation in collecting samples, Pr Pierre Fenaux for critical reading and helpful comments and Geraldine Orazi for cord blood samples. S Depil received a grant from the Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer.

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  1. Laboratoire d'Immunologie, Faculté de Médecine, Lille, France

    S Depil, C Roche, P Dussart & L Prin

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Depil, S., Roche, C., Dussart, P. et al. Expression of a human endogenous retrovirus, HERV-K, in the blood cells of leukemia patients. Leukemia 16, 254–259 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402355

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