Thirty-one patients (27 with acute myeloid leukemia [AML], 2 with acute lymphocytic leukemia [ALL], and 2 with acute mixed lineage leukemia [AMLL]) treated with conventional chemotherapy (CHT) and 23 patients (13 AML, 5 ALL, and 5 with chronic myeloid leukemia [CML]) treated with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) were monitored for WT1 expression levels in BM and peripheral blood (PB) by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction over a long-term period (mean, 29 months for CHT and 24 months for BMT).
These results suggest that the Ph1-positive and monosomy 7 AMLL in adults is de novo acute leukemia with both early B-lymphoid and myeloid phenotypes and may arise from malignant transformation of pluripotent stem cell, and expresses a heterogenous rearrangement pattern of the BCR gene.