Over the past 2 decades, dramatic improvements in the efficacy of treatments for chronic lymphocytic leukemia have led to progressively higher percentages of clinical complete remissions. A molecular eradication of the leukemia has become not only a desirable, but also an achievable, end point that needs to be evaluated within clinical trials. The assessment of complete remission only at the cl...

The measurement of minimal residual disease (MRD) in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has become the most important prognostic tool of, and the backbone to, upfront risk stratification. While MRD assessment is the standard of care for assessing response and predicting outcomes for pediatric patients with ALL receiving chemotherapy, its use in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell trans...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) carrying t(9;22) or t(4;11) genetic abnormalities represents a very high risk subtype of disease (VHR-ALL). Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) remains the best curative option not only for t(4;11) ALL, but also for t(9;22) ALL in the tyrosin-kinase inhibitors era. In the last years, low molecular level of minimal residual...

Minimal residual disease (MRD) refers to the small number of malignant cells that remain after therapy when the patient is in remission and shows no symptoms or overt signs of disease. Current treatment protocols for haematological malignancies allow most patients to obtain some form of MRD state, but cure seldom follows and in most cases fatal relapses occur sooner or later, leaving a bitter i...

The clinical value of serial minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring in core binding factor (CBF) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by quantitative RT-PCR was prospectively assessed in 278 patients [163 with t(8;21) and 115 with inv(16)] entered in the United Kingdom MRC AML 15 trial. CBF transcripts were normalized to 105 ABL copies. At remission, after course 1 induction chemotherapy, a > 3 log ...

Assessing molecular persistent or minimal residual disease (PD/MRD) in childhood Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is challenging because access to original tumor is usually needed to design patient-specific primers (PSPs). Because BL is characterized by rearranged immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgV(H)) genes, IgV(H) primer pools from IgV(H1)-IgV(H7) regions were tested to detect PD/MRD, thus eliminating the ...

Investigation of minimal residual disease (MRD) in acute leukemias by immunophenotyping and/or molecular techniques is proving to be increasingly valuable for disease monitoring. In acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), most MRD studies have focused on children, whereas in contrast, information on the value of MRD on adult ALL is scanty, and almost exclusively restricted to polymerase chain react...

Patient-tumor-specific oligonucleotides were generated for the detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) in a highly specific and sensitive clonotypic polymerase chain reaction (cPCR). The clone-specific region of highest diversity, CDR-III, was PCR amplified and sequenced. Nested CDR-III clonotypic primers were used in a semi-nested cPCR with a sensitivity of at least 1 in 10(5) cells. Patie...

OBJECTIVES We have analyzed t(12;21)(p13:q22) in an attempt to evaluate the frequency and prognostic significance of TEL-AML1 fusion gene in patients with childhood CD 10 positive B-ALL by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Also, we have monitored the prognostic value of this gene as a minimal residual disease (MRD). METHODS All bone marrow samples of eighty patients diagnosed as CD 1...