Background: Fetal hemoglobin (HbF) induction has shown promise for the treatment of β-hemoglobinopathies. HbF induction in β-thalassemia could overcome ineffective hematopoiesis and thus terminate transfusion dependency for formerly transfusion dependant patients. Several miRNAs have been found to reactivate γ-globin expression and increase HbF. In this study, we aimed to investigate the expression of 4 miRNAs (miR-15a, miR-16-1, miR-96, and miR-486-3p) in high HbF thalassemia patients and correlate their levels with the patients' HbF levels then, in order to predict the exact role of the studied miRNAs in hematopoiesis, a bioinformatic analysis was carried out. We went through this bioinformatic analysis to determine the network of genes regulated by miRNAs and further investigate the interaction between all of them through their involvement in hematopoiesis. In this study, the differential expression was measured by qRT-PCR for 40 patients with high HbF and compared to 20 healthy controls. Bioinformatics was conducted involving functional annotation and pathway enrichment analyses.
Results: The studied microRNAs were significantly deregulated in thalassemia patients in correlation with HbF. Functional annotation and pathway enrichment analyses revealed a major role of miR-486-3p and miR-15a in HbF induction.
Conclusion: MiR-486-3p and miR-15a are crucial for HbF induction. Further validating studies are needed.
Keywords: HbF induction; MicroRNA; Thalassemia therapy; miR-15a; miR-16-1; miR-486-3p; miR-96.