Standardized flow cytometry for highly sensitive MRD measurements in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia
2017
Abstract
A fully-standardized EuroFlow 8-color antibody panel and laboratory procedure was stepwise designed to measure minimal residual disease (MRD) in B-cell precursor (BCP) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients with a sensitivity of 4 million cells acquired, concordant results were obtained in 93% of samples. Most discordances were clarified upon high-throughput sequencing of antigen-receptor rearrangements and blind multicenter reanalysis of flow cytometric data, resulting in an unprecedented concordance of 98% (97% for samples withMRD 98% of patients with sensitivities at least similar toRQ-PCR ( 4310 6, preferablymore) are evaluated.