Molecular detection of tumor cells at diagnosis invading the bone marrow and peripheral blood of patients with aggressive or indolent lymphomas

We studied tumor cell invasions of bone marrow and peripheral blood in pati ents with various types of advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by amplifying co mplementarity determining region III using the polymerase chain reaction (P CR) method and developing patient-specific probes. After molecular engineer ing, we could detect tumor cells in bone marrow from seven of 11 cases and in peripheral blood from six of 11 cases, despite negative results in four cases studied morphologically. Indolent cases were more likely to yield pos itive results than aggressive cases. The reason may be different biological behaviors among the histological types. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.