Profiling Gene Expression of Pediatric Leukemia Samples

Jeremy Wang from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presented at the Nanopore Community Meeting 2021 on “Classification of pediatric acute leukemia using full-length transcriptomics.” This research was a collaboration for a pediatric oncologist also at UNC. They spoke about the variation in treatment of pediatric cancers based on local. Cellular and genetic characterization of pediatric cancers require machinery and costs that are often a challenge for low-income countries. Gene expression profiling alone, Wang described, can be used to classify tumor subtypes. The three most common acute leukemia lineages can be characterized based on gene expression profiling. Microarrays have been used in the past. Now, Nanopore RNA sequencing is an option. However, RNA integrity values and sample variability do lead to heterogeneity in transcript representation. Want noted that heterogeneity and sparsity “confound traditional classification methods.” The team is working with several collaborators to improve the workflow and accuracy.

wood squares with letters spelling Leukemia
How can pediatric leukemia samples and Nanopore devices be used for transcriptomics? Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com