Research Information System
in: Comprehensive Hematology and Stem Cell Research, nima rezaei, Editor, Elsevier Science, Oxford/Amsterdam , Amsterdam, pp.425-438, 2025
Flow cytometry (FCM) is a device frequently used in clinical routine and research experiments, such as the determination of lymphocyte subgroups, leukemia, and lymphoma phenotyping, enabling the collection of information about suspended cells in seconds.
Cancer is still one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity, threatening human health. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is a hematological malignant disease with clonal proliferation and cessation of maturation at any stage of the blood cell differentiation of lymphoid precursor cells in the bone marrow or thymus.
However, despite the success of the significant progress in the field of cancer treatment, the presence of tumor cells below the detectable limit of the conventional microscopy methods in patients with leukemia, who are assumed to be in complete remission, is causing Minimal (or Measurable) Residual Disease (MRD) and relapses. FCM-MRD is a fast and inexpensive laboratory tool in addition to its benefits and disadvantages in front of MRD with the polymerase chain reaction.
In this chapter, we discussed markers used to detect pediatric BCP-ALL and T-ALL MRD, points to consider, main challenges encountered during applications of flow cytometric procedures, and future perspectives.