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Response to Macintyre et al

Leukemia volume 15, page 1303 (2001)Cite this article

Delabesse et al1 observed that bone marrow (BM) samples at day 35 of ALL treatment contain many erythroid precursor cells (average 42%). Consequently they assumed that blood contamination would be minimal and therefore only low percentages of T cells would be present.1 This assumption is important for PCR-based detection of minimal residual disease (MRD), if T cell receptor gamma (TCRG) gene rearrangement are used as MRD-PCR target without junctional region specific oligonucleotides.2 Delabesse et al2 found that this MRD-PCR approach can routinely reach 5 × 10−3 and they assume that this sensitivity is sufficient for recognizing all truly high-risk patients. However, this sensitivity level is based on the assumption that the background of normal polyclonal TCRG gene rearrangements is derived from only 5 to 10% of normal T cells in the BM follow-up samples.2

Indeed, BM samples at most follow-up time points in childhood ALL treatment protocols contain low frequencies of T cells in the post-Ficoll mononuclear cell (MNC) fractions: 10 to 15%.3 However, this percentage is essentially higher in BM-MNC at day 33: approximately 38%.3

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dutch Childhood Leukemia Study Group, The Hague, The Netherlands

    ER van Wering & BEM van der Linden-Schrever

  2. Department of Immunology, University Hospital Rotterdam/Erasmus, University Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    VHJ van der Velden & JJM van Dongen

Authors
  1. ER van Wering
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  2. BEM van der Linden-Schrever
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  3. VHJ van der Velden
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  4. JJM van Dongen
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The Editor would like to emphasize how important scientific critical and friendly argument can prove fruitful. This is illustrated by the exchange of letters that is printed above.

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van Wering, E., van der Linden-Schrever, B., van der Velden, V. et al. Response to Macintyre et al. Leukemia 15, 1303 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402186

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