Assessing Minimal Residual Disease in Patients With ALL

Clinical Pearls

Mark R. Litzow, MD, chair, ECOG-ACRIN Leukemia Committee, professor of medicine, Division of Hematology, Mayo Clinic, discusses ways of conducting minimal residual disease (MRD) assessments in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

• Flow cytometry looks for abberant antigen expression of the lymphoblast
• Polymerase chain reaction looks at T cell receptor gene rearrangements for T cell ALL and hemoglobin gene rearrangements for B cell ALL
• Polymerase chain reaction is more labor intensive than flow cytometry, as primers have to be developed for each patient
• Next generation sequencing is being tested as a method for assessing MRD