Expression of miR-150 and its relationship with clinicobiological features. (A) The expression of 754 human miRNAs (TaqMan Array MicroRNA Cards; ABI) was screened in 10 purified CLL samples (>95% of CD5⁺19⁺ cells purified using RosseteSep Human B Cell Enrichment Cocktail, StemCell Technologies; RNA Integrity number >8). Results are visualized as geometric mean (black bars) and standard deviation (gray error bars). The lower Ct value corresponds to higher expression; Ct values >38 were considered as nondetectable miRNAs (n = 312). (B) The methylation levels in the region upstream of miR-150 in CLL cases stratified as low miR-150 expression (<median, n = 13) and high miR-150 (>median, n = 13). The prediction of transcription start sides for miR-150 in regions 1 and 2 is described in supplemental Figure 3. Analyzed region 1 contained 5 probes and region 2 contained 1 probe (region is defined by a size of ∼1000 nt). The methylation levels were compared using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test. The error bars represent standard deviation. (C-G) miR-150 expression was quantified in a cohort of 168 CLL patients (cohort characteristics in Table 1) and correlated to the clinicobiological characteristics of CLL cells such as IGHV mutation status (C), ZAP-70 expression (D), Rai stage (E), CD38 expression (F), and hierarchical classification of FISH abnormalities (G). The differences in expression were compared using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test. U IgHV, unmutated IGHV; M IgHV, mutated IGHV.