Evaluating the possible mechanism of action of a novel anti-fungal drug on cdc20gene expression in AML cell lines

Abstract
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is fast progressing cancer of the blood which originates in the bone marrow. Increased expression of Cdc20 has been implicated in various cancerous cells and is considered to be a potential target for anti-cancer drugs.
The present study was conducted to evaluate the mechanism of action, of a novel drug used to treat AML. The drug is an established antifungal agent and has been shown to cause cytotoxicity in AML cell lines. The evaluation was based on RNA levels, derived from treated AML cell lines compared to non-treated AML cell lines.
Reverse transcription was used to get the cDNA from the extracted RNA. The qRT-PCR approach was implemented to evaluate the changes in expression of cdc20 RNA between treated and untreated samples.
The Cycle Threshold (CT) values were obtained in the qRT-PCR assay. The average CT values for the cdc20 gene were highest for the sample that was treated with the drug. This indicated the novel drug must have reduced the overall expression of the cdc20 gene compared to the samples that were untreated with the novel drug.
The change in fold expression of the 2^-ΔΔCT values were obtained. These values indicated the foldchange of expression of cdc20between the treated and untreated samples with respect to endogenous control. It was indicated that the novel drug reduced the expression of cdc20 by 63%, compared to calibrators.
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Introduction
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is fast …