Monitoring Of Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) By Real-time Quantitative Reverse Transcription PCR In Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

Objectives: In China, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the major part of leukemia, which is one of the tenth frequency malignancies. Minimal residual disease (MRD) is defined that there are residual leukemia cells in the range of 10~6-10~8 in the patients who are in complete remission (CR). Now, a large number of studies have shown that detection of MRD, significantly correlates with clinical outcome in many hematologic malignancies. How to improve the detection of MRD has become an important study for leukemia therapy. Recently, the application of retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide has made it possible for patients to achieve CR. However, relapse still occurs in part of patients . Some prospective research indicated that it is useful for monitoring of MRD for predicting relapse. Real-time quantitative PCR can monitor the PCR products in the whole amplification. The method is very specific, accurate and automatic. Acute promyelocytic leukemia is characterized by the presence of the t(15;17),which produces the PML-RARαfusion gene. We have established a real-time quantitative PCR RNA substances for the detection of PML-RARαfusion gene. Using this method, we were able to detect MRD in 25 patients in diagnosis, CR or relapse. Moreover, we successfully...