MINIMAL RESIDUAL DISEASE IN CHILDHOOD ACUTE-LEUKEMIA - A NEW DIAGNOSTIC-APPROACH

In Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) there is a persistence of several (10(4)/10(6)) tumoral cells in the bone marrow of patients in remission, which are not detectable by classical cytomorphological techniques and can cause a relapse. In this paper we are revieioing some approaches which are utilized to detect MRD from classical ones, such as cytomorphology, immunochemistry, cytogenetics, to more recent ones such as immunology, flow cytometry, leukemic progenitors cultures and molecular biology. Especially we focused our attention on the new technique of molecular biology which are very useful to increase the sensitivity and the specificity in the detection of residual leukemic cells after treatment. We report here also some results obtained in our laboratory.