Down regulation of BCL11B expression inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis in malignant T cells by BCL11B-935-siRNA.

To screen the highly efficient and specific B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia/lymphoma 11B (BCL11B) small interfering RNA (siRNA) which are able to downregulate the BCL11B gene expression in human T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, thereby inhibiting the leukemic T-cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis, four BCL11B-siRNAs and the scrambled non-silencing siRNA control (sc) were designed and obtained by chemosynthesis. After nucleofection, BCL11B expression in the mRNA and the protein levels were measured by qRT-PCR and immunoblotting, respectively. The biological consequences based on the highly efficient and specific BCL11B-siRNA were demonstrated by CCK-8 kit, morphological changes (Hoechst 33258 staining), high-resolution imaging, and flow cytometry. Reduction in the BCL11B mRNA level was observed at 24 or 48 hours in molt-4 T cells with BCL11B-935-siRNA, BCL11B-434-siRNA, or BCL11B-748-siRNA, respectively. BCL11B protein expression levels were reduced by 34·77% and 41·73% in the BCL11B-935-siRNA- and BCL11B-434-siRNA-treated cells, compared with the control level at 72 hours. In comparison with BCL11B-434-siRNA treatment group, the Molt-4 cells transfected with the BCL11B-935-siRNA showed significantly inhibited proliferation and effectively induced apoptosis (P<0·05). When highly efficient and specific BCL11B-935-siRNA was used to analyze the inhibition of BCL11B mRNA level in primary T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) cells, similar result was obtained. In conclusion, siRNAs targeting the different exon domains resulted in different silencing effects and biological consequences. Suppression of BCL11B by RNA interference could inhibit the proliferation and induce the apoptosis effectively in leukemic T cells, which might be considered as a new target therapeutic strategy in T-cell malignancies.