Quantitation of BCR/ABL Chimeric Gene In Chronic Myeloid Leukemia By Real-Time Pcr, Correlation With Immunophenotyping

SummaryChronic myeloid leukemia is a myeloproliferative disorder, that results from a clonal expansion of transformed heamatopoietic progenitor cells and includes myeloid, monocytic, erythroid, meghakaryocytic andlymphoid lineages.Philadelphia chromosome, observed in 95% of chronic myeloid.leukemia, results from the reciprocal exchange of genetic material between.long arm of chromosomes 9 and 22 with break points in the ABL and BCR.genes, respectively. This exchange creates a fusion gene BCR/ABL.BCR/ABL chimeric gene codes for proteins with altered tyrosine.kinase activities that leads to malignant transformation and contribute to.the pathogenesis of Ph+ leukemias.The use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of.BCR/ABL gene offers a great advantage over cytogenetics and proved to.be the number one choice for monitoring the disease and detection of.MRD.The evolution of PCR to adapt to the needs for rapid, accurate,standardized detection of genetic rearrangements, resulted in the production.of real-time quantitative PCR, which proved to be very important in the.monitoring of CML and estimating the response to therapy. Recent studies have used real time PCR in determining major molecular response in CML patients defined as achievement of 3 log reduction in BCR/ABL normalized ratio% from standardized base line.