FLOW CYTOMETRIC CELL SORTING COMBINED WITH MOLECULAR CHIMERISM ANALYSIS TO DETECT MINIMAL RECURRENT LEUKEMIA - GOOD-NEWS AND BAD-NEWS

Allogeneic BMT offers the possibility of cure for a variety of hematop oietic malignancies, but disease relapse remains a major cause of trea tment failure. This report describes two cases in which flow cytometri c cell sorting (FAGS) and molecular chimerism analysis were combined t o increase the sensitivity of minimal residual disease (MRD) detection , In the first case this approach was used to demonstrate that a suspi cious phenotype was not recurrent leukemia, thus preventing the use of potentially toxic therapy, In the second case the recurrence of a leu kemia which was undetectable by conventional analysis was confirmed, T he potential benefits of combining these MRD detection methods are dis cussed.