DETECTION OF IMMUNOGLOBULIN GENE REARRANGEMENT IN LYMPHOID MALIGNANCIES OF B-CELL LINEAGE BY SEMINESTED POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION GENE AMPLIFICATION

Seminested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify the DNA fragments of the complementarity-determining region 3 of the immunogl obulin (1g) gene heavy chain from the malignant cell specimens of pati ents with leukemias and lymphomas of B-cell lineage. Two different pai rs of primers were used sequentially. Twenty of the 27 (74%) acute lym phoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients, 14 of 19 (74%) chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients and eight of 20 (40%) non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) patients, who had rearrangement of the Ig gene heavy chain by So uthern analysis, were positive by the seminested PCR. False-negative r esults appeared to occur more commonly in cases of lymphoma. The PCR a nalysis was also less likely to be positive if one-stage PCR studies w ith either pair of primers were both negative. The seminested PCR tech nique was found to have a high sensitivity of detecting malignant cell s at the level of 0.02%. The clinical application of this assay needs to be investigated further.