// Ana Koren 1 , Matija Rijavec 1 , Eva Sodja 1 , Izidor Kern 1 , Aleksander Sadikov 2 , Viljem Kovac 3 , Peter Korosec 1 , Tanja Cufer 1 1 University Clinic Golnik, Golnik, Slovenia 2 University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Ljubljana, Slovenia 3 Institute of Oncology Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia Correspondence to: Ana Koren, email: ana.koren@klinika-golnik.si Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer, peripheral whole blood, BMI1 , mRNA expression, prognosis Received: August 26, 2016 Accepted: February 07, 2017 Published: March 06, 2017 ABSTRACT Polycomb group member protein BMI1 is involved in maintaining cell identity, proliferation, differentiation and human oncogenesis. In the present study, we determined BMI1 mRNA expression in whole blood and evaluated the impact of the expression level on the treatment response and survival of 96 advanced NSCLC patients treated with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy. We also determined BMI1 mRNA expression in primary tumors from 22 operable NSCLC patients treated with radical surgery. We found that compared with control subjects, BMI1 mRNA expression in whole blood of advanced NSCLC patients was decreased ( P
