Gene expression profiling of imatinib-treated and untreated human Hematopoetic progenitors expressing the ETV6-PDGFRB oncogene

In order to investigate the mechanism whereby TEL-PDGF-beta (ETV6-PDGFRB) interferes with human hematopoietic progenitors proliferation and differentiation, we analyzed the gene expression response downstream this oncogene. CD34+ cells infected with lentivirus coding for TEL-PDGFRb were cultured for 7 days in the absence of cytokines. Using Affymetrix microarrays, we compared gene expression in these cells and in cells treated for 4 h with low dose imatinib (Glivec), a potent PDGFR inhibitor, to switch off TEL-PDGFRb signaling. This experiment was performed in three biological replicates. In each replicate gene expression profiling from CD34+ HSCs expressing TEL-PDGFRb untreated with Glivec was compared to the corresoniding treated condition. Total RNA were extracted from transduced CD34+ cells using Trizol reagent (Invitrogen) and the RNeasy kit (QIAGEN).