The overall goal of the project is to investigate if the accelerated myeloid maturation induced by Pbx1 loss in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells is mediated by miRNAs, with the aim of exploiting them for cancer differentiation therapy in acute myeloid leukemia. In the current study we will profile miRNA of wt and Pbx1-null highly purified hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), multi-potent progenitors (MPPs), common-myeloid progenitors (CMPs) and granulocyte-monocyte progenitors (GMPs), with the aim of selecting candidate miRNAs after correlation with mRNA profiling data. Dr. Uva, researcher at the CRS4 Bioinformatics Laboratory, will be responsible of the bioinformatics analysis. He will apply to the transcriptional and miRNA data recently developed algorithms for mRNA-miRNA target prediction, for highlighting particular pathways affected by specific miRNAs or by combination of miRNAs.
