The fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch and silencing of fetal hemoglobin (HbF) have been areas of long-standing interest among hematologists, given the fact that clinical induction of HbF production holds tremendous promise to ameliorate the clinical symptoms of sickle cell disease (SCD) and β-thalassemia. In this article, we discuss historic attempts to induce HbF that have resulted in some ther...

Clinical and hematologic characteristics of beta(β)-thalassemia are determined by several factors resulting in a wide spectrum of severity. Phenotype modulators are: HBB mutations, HBA defects and fetal hemoglobin production modulators (HBG2:g.-158C>T polymorphism, HBS1L-MYB intergenic region and the BCL11A). We characterized 54 genetic variants at these five loci robustly associated with the a...

Increased expression of fetal hemoglobin (HbF) may ameliorate the clinical course of hemoglobinopathies. Hydroxyurea (HU) is the only inducer approved for the treatment of these diseases able to stimulate HbF production but patients' response is highly variable indicating the utility of the identification of pharmacogenomic biomarkers in order to predict pharmacological treatment efficacy. To d...

A cohort of 106 patients included in the French National Registry for Thalassemia were genotyped for 5 genetic modifiers of severity: (i) beta-thalassemia mutations, (ii) the XmnI SNP, (iii) the -3.7 kb alpha-thal deletion, (iv) the tag-SNP rs 11886868 in BCL11A exon 2 and (v) the tag-SNP rs9399137 in the HBSB1L-cMYB inter-region. Multivariate analysis was performed to study the risk of Thalass...

Today the regulatory role of microRNAs (miRs) is well characterized in many diverse cel- lular processes. MiR-based regulation is categorized under epigenetic regulatory mecha- nisms. These small non-coding RNAs participate in producing and maturing erythrocytes, expressing hematopoietic factors and regulating expression of globin genes by post-tran- scriptional gene silencing. The changes in e...

BACKGROUND Sickle cell disease (SCD) has a high prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. There are several cardiovascular phenotypes in SCD that contribute to its morbidity and mortality. DISCUSSION SCD is characterised by marked clinical variability, with genetic factors playing key modulating roles. Studies in Tanzania and Cameroon have reported that singlenucleotide polymorphisms in BCL11A and HB...

The persistence of high fetal hemoglobin level in adults may ameliorate the clinical phenotype of beta-thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. Several genetic variants responsible for hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin, linked and not linked to the beta globin gene cluster, have been identified in patients and in normal individuals. Monoallelic loss of KLF1, a gene with a key role in erythr...