Surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy have been applied to the curative therapy of 50% of cancer patients in the United States during the past 100 years. It is clear that the chemotherapeutic agents used to develop curative therapy for leukemias, lymphomas, gestational malignancy, ...
The human breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1 is a tumorsuppressor gene which is mutated and lost in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and has both alleles mutated in approximately 10-15% of cases of sporadic ovarian cancer. Studies of chromosome loss in ovarian cancer sh ...
Selectively replicating viruses may offer a new approach to cancer treatment. If successful in clinical trials, these agents will constitute a new category in the antitumoral armamentarium. Many viruses are currently being studied, and an adenovirus (ONYX-015) first entered clinic ...
Functional T cells are the central component of an effective antitumor immune response. However, in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC), the growth of antigenic tumors proceeds in the absence of significant T-cell responses, posing a distinct obstacle to the development of effective ...
Renal cell carcinoma is expected to account for 30,000 new cancer cases and 11,900 cancer deaths in the United States in 1999 (1). At the time of initial presentation, up to one-third of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) have metastatic disease; furthermore, almost half of the patients resect ...
Idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES) and chronic eosinophilic leukemia (CEL) are related hematological malignancies characterized by sustained, unexplained hypereosinophilia (1,500 eosinophils/μL) (1–4). The term CEL is used when there is evidence that the dise ...
During the last decade, many mutations present in myeloid leukemias have been molecularly characterized. Several of these mutations have clear prognostic impact. The molecular screening of these mutations has now become an essential part in several risk-adapted international cl ...
The prevalence of an internal tandem duplication (ITD) of the juxtamembrane domain-coding sequence and a missense mutation of D835 within the kinase domain of the FLT3 gene is 15–35% and 5–10% of adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), respectively. In addition, point mutations, deletions, a ...
The Wilms tumor gene was identified as a tumor suppressor gene responsible for a particu-lar type of kidney tumor. Several years ago, it was demonstrated that it is also overexpressed in acute and chronic leukemias. Although the exact role of this gene in the hematopoietic system is still quite comp ...
A cluster of differentiation (CD) antibody microarray called the DotScan microarray has been developed that enables an extensive immunophenotype to be obtained for a suspension of leukocytes in a single analysis. For a leukemia with a leukemia count of greater than 10 � 109/L, the immunophen ...
Accurate diagnosis and classification of leukemias are the bases for the appropriate management of patients. The diagnostic accuracy and efficiency of present methods may be improved by the use of microarrays. The followin g chapter gives an overview of the method of gene expression profi ...
A single acquired mutation in the JAK2 gene has recently been described in human myeloproliferative disorders, including most patients with polycythemia vera and about half of those with essential thrombocythemia and idiopathic myelofibrosis. Reliable and easily implemented ...
Molecular monitoring of hematopoietic chimerism has become a routine diagnostic approach in patients after allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Chimerism testing permits the documentation and surveillance of engraftment and facilitates early detection of impending ...
The polycythemia rubra vera 1 gene (PRV-1), a member of the urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor superfamily, is overexpressed in granulocytes isolated from the peripheral blood of patients with polycythemia vera (PV) and essential thrombocythemia (ET). PRV-1 overexp ...
In this chapter, methods to isolate RNA and DNA from human leukocytes for the subsequent use in molecular diagnostic tests are described. In addition, protocols for cDNA synthesis are given, both for the use in conventional reverse transcription (RT)-polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and for ...
Chromosome analysis is an essential part of the diagnostic testing of myeloid malignancies. Good chromosome preparations are essential for a complete cytogenetic analysis. This means plentiful metaphase spreads with well-spread crisply banded chromosomes. To achieve such a re ...
In acute myeloid leukemia (AML), molecular diagnosis for the optimal management of patients and for minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring is of extreme importance. Cumulative data suggest that quantitative monitoring or MRD in AML with fusion transcripts corresponding to 5(I;2 ...
Real-time quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RQ-PCR) methods for the quantitation of BCR-ABL mRNA in the blood of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) has become the predominant molecular monitoring technique. The BCR-ABL fusion gene is expr ...
With the development of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), it was possible to detect the BCR-ABL fusion signal in both metaphase spreads and interphase cells of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). However, the use of FISH to detect residual disease in patients with CML post th ...
The major mechanism of imatinib resistance for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is clonal expansion of leukemic cells with mutations in the Bcr-Abl fusion tyrosine kinase that reduce the capacity of imatinib to inhibit kinase activity. The early detection of such mutations m ...

