Minimal Residual Disease Detection Identifies Differences between the Risk Groups Defined by the ALL IC-BFM 2002 and the ALL-BFM 2000 Protocols.

Minimal residual disease (MRD) testing based on a unique Ig/TCR gene rearrangement pattern of each patient’s leukaemia turned out to be an independent tool to determine treatment response and the risk of relapse in paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). Since 07/2000, MRD information at week 5 and 12 of therapy has been used for stratification in ALL-BFM 2000 trial. In parallel, ALL IC-BFM 2002 has been designed by the International-BFM Group to test the morphological assessment of the early treatment response. Patients are stratified according to the blast proportion in peripheral blood (PB) at day 8 and in bone marrow (BM) at day 15 and 33 of therapy, age, initial WBC and the presence of BCR/ABL and MLL/AF4 fusion. One of the goals of the study is the comparison of this risk group assessment to the MRD-based criteria used in ALL-BFM 2000. In the Czech Republic, 73 patients were treated according to ALL IC-BFM 2002 protocol from 11/2002 to 12/2003, 29 in the standard-risk (SR), 35 in the intermediate-risk (IR) and 9 in the high-risk (HR) group. The SR, HR and all T-cell ALL patients were examined for clonal Ig/TCR rearrangements. RQ-PCR patient-specific systems were designed for each of these patients according to the ESG-MRD-ALL criteria. For 39 of the 40 patients tested (97.5%) at least one target with minimal sensitivity of 10(−4) was identified. MRD was evaluated in BM samples from 34 patients at several time points inclusive of the mandatory 5 and 12 week ones. Simultaneously the PB specimens of the T-ALL patients were tested. In total, 205 BM and 64 PB specimens were included. In 7 patients of 24 in the SR group, MRD positivity at week 5 and/or at week 12 was observed (ranging between 9.7x10(−4) and 1.5x10(−2)), thus identifying patients who would not qualify to the MRD-based SR group in ALL-BFM 2000 despite the identical induction regimen. In T-ALL patients, PB-MRD levels paralleled those in BM. MRD results showed no separation of MRD levels between IR- and HR-stratified T-ALL patients. These preliminary findings reveal a significant difference between the stratification results of ALL IC-BFM 2002 and ALL-BFM 2000. A fast response as measured by the morphology criterion (M1 or M2 bone marrow at day 15) together with other low-risk features does not necessarily correspond with rapid MRD clearance. The complete analysis of MRD is planned for the international consortium participating in the ALL IC-BFM 2002 protocol.