Molecular evaluation of minimal residual disease in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia cases

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is a hematological malignancy with bone marrow and extramedullary clonal proliferation of lymphoid progenitor cells. ALL shows two different age-related distributions: pediatric (mean age 5 years) and adult (mean age 50 years). ALL is a malignancy that usually affects children. Cells that escape treatment and cause relapses in leukemia are defined as minimal residual disease (MRD). Relapse is a serious problem in acute leukemias. The most important factor causing relapses after treatment is MRD. Therefore, follow-up of MRD is important in terms of disease-free life. The purpose of the thesis study was to determined expression level of CXCR4, PDGFRB, RANTES, TWIST1 and VEGFR2 in bone marrow or blood samples for follow-up of MRD in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients. Patient samples were obtained from 46 pediatric ALL patients diagnosed in Akdeniz University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatric Hematology Department of Pediatric Hematology and 10 healthy control groups. First of all, RNA isolation was performed from the collected blood and bone marrow samples. Then, expression levels of genes were measured from RNA samples by Real Time PCR method. As a result, we found that the RANTES expression level changes in pediatric ALL. In the light of our findings, we think that the RANTES gene has an important role in ALL pathogenesis and can be considered as a biomarker. We believe that supportive studies in larger cohorts are needed for RANTES to be accepted as a biomarker in ALL and MRD.