Abstract: Objective To investigate the role of ALDH18A1 in the promotion of neuroblastoma malignancy. Methods Immunohistochemical was applied to examine the expression levels of ALDH18A1 and MYCN in patients with neuroblastoma. Afterwhile, the correlation was confirmed by Western blot and RT-qPCR in the SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell transfected with ALDH18A1 shRNA-expression and over-expression vectors. Results ALDH18A1 was closely related with the age of onset, stage and metastasis in neuroblastoma patients (P<0.001). Meanwhile, patients with up-regulated ALDH18A1 showed the high expression of MYCN (P<0.001). Besides, the Western blot confirmed the promotion of MYCN in the SH-SY5Y transfected with ALDH18A1 overexpression vector, while the expression of MYCN reduced in the SH-SY5Y transfected with ALDH18A1 shRNA-expression vector. Finally, the RT-qPCR indicted that the up-regulation of MYCN was induced in the transcriptional level. Conclusions ALDH18A1 is closely related with malignancy of neuroblastoma. The mechanism involved is the up-regulation of MYCN in transcriptional level induced by ALDH18A1.

Key words: ALDH18A1, MYCN, neuroblastoma