Expression and clinical implications of the soluble drug resistance-related calcium-binding protein (sorcin) gene in leukemia patients. 
To study the relationship between the expression of soluble drug resistance-related calcium-binding protein (sorcin) gene and the clinical multidrug resistance in acute leukemia (AL).  A semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to investigate the transcription levels of the human sorcin gene in 95 AL patients and 27 controls.  Sorcin gene expression was significantly higher in AL patients than in normal contrls (P < 0.001), and higher in relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients than in those newly diagnosed or in complete remission.  Sorcin gene overexpression was significantly lower in non-resistant patients than in resistant ones (P < 0.001).  CR rates of these two groups were 20.0% and 80.0%, respectively.  Sorcin gene expression was higher in AML-M(5) patients than M(2), M(3), M(4) patients.  Sorcin gene overexpression is significantly associated with clinical multidrug resistance and prognosis, it is one of the indicators for predicting prognosis of AL patients.