Journal of Molecular Biomarkers & Diagnosis

Digital PCR (Dpcr) a Step Forward to Detection and Quantification of Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) in Ph+/BCR-ABL1 Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML)

Abstract

Simona Bernardi, Giuseppina Ruggieri, Michele Malagola, Valeria Cancelli, Federica Cattina, Nicola Polverelli, Camilla Zanaglio, Simone Perucca, Federica Re, Alessandro Montanelli, and Domenico Russo

Philadelphia-positive (Ph+), BCR-ABL1, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a model of leukemia driven by a single, specific, chromosome translocation, the t (9;22) (q22;q11). This translocation, leading to a new, hybrid, leukemia-specific gene (BCR-ABL1) encoding for a deregulated tyrosine-kinase protein (p210), drives the leukemic transformation of hematopoietic stem cells [1-6] and induces the progression of the disease from the early chronic phase (CP) to the late blastic phase BP) which close the natural history of the disease. In the 2000s, the introduction of Imatinib, the first tyrosinekinase inhibitor (TKI) able to target the protein p210, significantly changed the fate of CML to fatal disease in real chronic disease.