The expression of the MLL gene had a higher specificity and sensitivity than WT1 or MRD monitored by FCM for predicting the relapse of the patients with MLL + AL.
Of the 10 WT1-mutated cases, eight (80 %) had mutations in other genes, including FLT3-ITD in two cases, FLT3-D835 mutation in two, KIT mutation in three, MLL-PTD in three, NRAS mutation in one, and KRAS mutation in two (in some cases, more than one additional gene was mutated).
We established a real-time PCR method that can simultaneously detect 10 different fusion transcripts (major, minor and micro BCR/ABL, AML1/MTG8, PML/RARalpha, CBFbeta/MYH11, TEL/AML1, E2A/PBX1, MLL/AF4, and MLL/AF9) together with Wilms' tumor gene (WT1) transcripts.