MONITORING MINIMAL RESIDUAL DISEASE IN ACUTE-LEUKEMIA - EXPECTATIONS, POSSIBILITIES AND INITIAL CLINICAL-RESULTS

Therapy of acute leukemia may be improved by a more accurate assessment of the effects of treatment on tumor burden and by anticipating relapse with greater precision. The sensitivity limit of assessing residual disease by morphology is usually 5%. Several alternative approaches are available to study minimal residual disease, defined as the presence of leukemic cells not detectable by morphology. These include studies of chromosomal abnormalities by conventional karyotyping, flow cytometry, in situ hybridization and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), investigation of gene rearrangements by Southern blotting and PCR, and immunological methods. Some of these techniques enable the detection of 1 leukemic cells among 10 000 or more normal cells. In the following, the advantages and limitations of sensitive methods for detecting small numbers of leukemic cells are reviewed. The rationale for monitoring residual disease in acute leukemia and the initial results of studies correlating minimal residual disease and clinical outcome are discussed.