Intercenter reproducibility of binary typing for Staphylococcus aureus.

The reproducibility of the binary typing (BT) protocol developed for epidemiological typing of Staphylococcus aureus was analyzed in a biphasic multicenter study. In a Dutch multicenter pilot study, 10 genetically unique isolates of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) were characterized by the BT assay as presented by van Leeuwen et al.

A novel RT-PCR-based protein activity truncation assay for direct assessment of deoxycytidine kinase in small numbers of purified leukemic cells.

In vitro studies have demonstrated that deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) plays a crucial role in the mechanism of resistance to cytarabine (AraC). The resistant phenotype in vitro is always a result of mutational inactivation of dCK, leading to defects in the metabolic pathways of AraC. Although inactivation of dCK has shown to be one of the major mechanism of resistance to AraC in vitro, limited in vivo data are available.

High incidence of alternatively spliced forms of deoxycytidine kinase in patients with resistant acute myeloid leukemia.

Deficiency of functional deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) is a common characteristic for in vitro resistance to cytarabine (AraC). To investigate whether dCK is also a target for induction of AraC resistance in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), we determined dCK messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in (purified) leukemic blasts and phytohemagglutinin-stimulated T cells (PHA T cells) from patients with chemotherapy-sensitive and chemotherapy-resistant AML. In control samples from healthy donors (PHA T cells and bone marrow), only wild-type dCK complementary DNA (cDNA) was amplified.

Complete remission of accelerated phase chronic myeloid leukemia by treatment with leukemia-reactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

Relapse of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) can be successfully treated by donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI). However, relapse of accelerated phase CML, blast crisis, or acute leukemia after allogeneic SCT are resistant to DLI in the majority of cases. In vitro-selected and expanded leukemia-reactive T-cell lines may be more effective in inducing an antileukemic response in vivo.