MicroRNA miR-125b causes leukemia

MicroRNA miR-125b has been implicated in several kinds of leukemia. The chromosomal translocation t(2;11)(p21;q23) found in patients with myelodysplasia and acute myeloid leukemia leads to an overexpression of miR-125b of up to 90-fold normal. Moreover, miR-125b is also up-regulated in patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia carrying the t(11;14)(q24;q32) translocation. To decipher the presumed oncogenic mechanism of miR-125b, we used transplantation experiments in mice. All mice transplanted with fetal liver cells ectopically expressing miR-125b showed an increase in white blood cell count, in particular in neutrophils and monocytes, associated with a macrocytic anemia. Among these mice, half died of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or a myeloproliferative neoplasm, suggesting an important role for miR-125b in early hematopoiesis. Furthermore, coexpression of miR-125b and the BCR-ABL fusion gene in transplanted cells accelerated the development of leukemia in mice, compared with control mice expressing only BCR-ABL, suggesting that miR-125b confers a proliferative advantage to the leukemic cells. Thus, we show that overexpression of miR-125b is sufficient both to shorten the latency of BCR-ABL-induced leukemia and to independently induce leukemia in a mouse model.