Can synthetic lethality approach be used with DNA repair genes for primary and secondary MDS?

Cancer-specific defects in DNA repair pathways create the opportunity to employ synthetic lethality approach. Recently, GEMA (gene expression and mutation analysis) approach detected insufficient expression of BRCA or NHEJ (non-homologous end joining) to predict PARP inhibitors response. We evaluated a possible role of DNA repair pathways using gene expression of single-strand break (XPA, XPC, XPG/ERCC5, CSA/ERCC8, and CSB/ERCC6) and double-strand break (ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, RAD51, XRCC5, XRCC6, LIG4) in 92 patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (73 de novo, 9 therapy-related (t-MDS).

Prognostic importance of Aurora Kinases and mitotic spindle genes transcript levels in Myelodysplastic syndrome.

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) are a heterogeneous group of clonal disease characterized by insufficiency of bone marrow, increase of apoptosis and increased risk of acute leukemia progression. Proteins related to the mitotic spindle (AURKA, AURKB, TPX2), to the mitotic checkpoint (MAD2, CDC20) and the regulation of the cell cycle (p21) are directly related to chromosomal stability and tumor development. This study aimed to evaluate the mRNA expression levels of these genes in 101 MDS patients using a real-time PCR methodology.