The aim of this study was to investigate the expression status of the helicase antigen (HAGE) transcript and its clinical significance in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The expression of HAGE cDNA in bone marrow mononuclear cells from AML and CML patients was detected by using real-time quantitative PCR. The results indicated that overexpression of HAGE transcript (117.12% - 9842.70%, median 434.96%) was detected in 14.8% (11/74) AML patients. AML patients with HAGE cDNA expression were significantly older than those HAGE-negative patients (median 67 and 45 years, respectively, p = 0.001). HAGE cDNA expression was more frequently present among the patients with acute monoblastic leukemia (M(4) and M(5), 7 of 20, 35.0%), compared to the patients with acute non-monoblastic leukemia (M(1), M(2), M(3) and M(6), 4 of 54, 7.4%) (p = 0.007). 28.6% (8/28) cases with normal karyotypes showed HAGE cDNA overexpression, significantly higher than 7.5% (3 of 40) in those with chromosomal abnormalities (p = 0.041). Overexpression of HAGE transcript was found in 9 (34.6%) CML cases and more frequently observed at accelerated phase and blast crisis (4/4, 100%) than that at chronic phase (5/22, 22.7%) (p = 0.008). It is concluded that HAGE cDNA expression is relevant to specific subtypes of AML and to the progression of CML.