Quantitative, real-time polymerase chain reactions for FLT3 internal tandem duplications are highly sensitive and specific

Stirewalt, Derek L.; Willman, Cheryl L.; Radich, Jerald P.

« Previous Next »Leukemia Research
Volume 25, Issue 12 , Pages 1085-1088, December 2001

Quantitative, real-time polymerase chain reactions for FLT3 internal tandem duplications are highly sensitive and specific

Derek L. Stirewalt
- Program in Genetics and Genomics, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, D4-100, 1100 Fairview Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109, USA
- Division of Oncology, University of Washington, USA
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-206-667-5113; fax: +1-206-667-2917
Cheryl L. Willman
- Southwest Oncology Group Leukemia Biology Committee, San Antonio, TX 78245, USA
- Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
Jerald P. Radich
- Program in Genetics and Genomics, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, D4-100, 1100 Fairview Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109, USA
- Division of Oncology, University of Washington, USA
- Southwest Oncology Group Leukemia Biology Committee, San Antonio, TX 78245, USA

Received 20 February 2001; accepted 20 April 2001.

Abstract

Internal tandem duplications (ITDs) of the FLT3 gene occur in ≈20–30% of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. We investigated if FLT3 ITDs could be used as minimal residual disease (MRD) markers for AML patients. Patient-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays for FLT3 ITDs were developed for four AML samples that contained FLT3 ITDs of varying size and location. The real-time, quantitative PCR assays for FLT3 ITDs were highly sensitive and specific, detecting between 0.01 and 0.001% of FLT3 ITD positive DNA in a background of 1 μg of normal bone marrow DNA. Our findings suggest that FLT3 ITDs can be used as molecular markers for MRD in patients with AML.

Keywords: Leukemia, Myeloid, FLT3, Minimal residual disease

Abbreviations: AML, acute myeloid leukemia, CR, complete remission, ITD, internal tandem duplication, MRD, minimal residual disease, PCR, polymerase chain reaction, SSCP, single-strand conformation polymorphism