前沿科技及其它

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 ...

The t(15;17) is the diagnostic hallmark of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). As a result, the RARA and the promyelocytic leukemia (PML) genes are fused. The use of reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the detection of the PML-RARA and RARA-PML fusion genes is the only t ...

Assessing the level of residual disease in leukemia is vital for evaluating patients’ response to treatment and for identifying those at high risk of relapse. This should enable early preemptive intervention to prevent the onset of hematological relapse in those patients. One of the most co ...

The last 15 yr have produced dramatic improvements in the survival rate of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). These improvements have been due mainly to the introduction of targeted therapies and improved methods for diagnosing and monitoring this disease. The underly ...

Ovarian cancer represents the fifth most significant cause of cancer-related death for women and is the most frequent cause of death from gynecological neoplasia in the Western world. The incidence of ovarian cancer in the United Kingdom (U.K.) is over 5000 new cases every year, accounting for 42 ...

Ovarian cancer is the most common fatal cancer of the female reproductive tract in industrialized countries. At the time of writing, it is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in women in the U.K., after breast, lung, and colorectal cancer, with a lifetime risk of approximately 2% (1). It tends to pres ...

Differential display is a powerful way to identify alterations in gene expressron that can be contrasted by different states or treatments in side-by-side comparisons (1). An inherent strength of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based differential-display approach is that only a ...

Evidence that steroid hormones can play an important role in gynecological malignancies has been provided since 1896, when Sir George Beatson reported remissions in two patients with breast cancer after bilateral oophorectomy. All steroid hormones act on their target cells by binding ...

The IGF-1 receptor (IGF-1-R) belongs to the tyrosine kinase growth factor receptor family. It is structurally similar to, but distinct from, the insulin receptor, with which it shares a 70% homology. As expected, it crossreacts with insulin and, vice versa, insulin receptor crossreacts with IGF ...

Flow cytometry (FCM) is a sophisticated technique for rapid simultaneous analysis of multiple cellular parameters. The technique is based on the interception of a hydrodynamically focused stream of single cells in suspension by an excitation light beam at high speed. As a result, each cell p ...

Matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) are a family of structurally and functionally related endopeptidases. They have in common a zinc ion at the active site and are released as an inactive proform (zymogen). Proteolytic activation enables MMPs to degrade components of the extracellular mat ...

Western blotting is utilized to detect and quantify the amount of a specific protein in a complex mixture of proteins and at the same time to determine its molecular weight. In particular, by Western blotting it is also possible to detect and discriminate the two isoforms of nm23, H1, and H2 (1, 2). nm23-H1 is ab ...