Automatic detection and genetic profiling of disseminated neuroblastoma cells

Background. Rare tumor cells circulating in the hematopoietic system can es cape identification. On the other hand, the nature of these cells, positive for an immunological tumor marker, cannot be determined without any geneti c information. Procedure. To overcome these problems a novel computer assis ted scanning system for automatic cell search, analysis, and sequential rep ositioning was developed. This system allows an exact quantitative analysis of rare tumor cells in the bone marrow and peripheral blood by sequential immunological and molecular cytogenetic characterization. Results and Concl usions. In that virtually all tumor cells in a mixing experiment could be r ecovered unambiguously, we can conclude that the sensitivity of this approa ch is set by the number of cells available for analysis. Sequential FISH an alyses of immunologically positive cells improve both the specificity and t he sensitivity of the microscopic minimal residual disease detection. Med. Pediatr. Oncol. 36:205-209, 2001. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.