A novel flow cytometric assay for detection of residual disease in patients with B-lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma post anti-CD19 therapy.

Background: Residual disease detection following therapy is an important prognostic variable in B-lymphoblastic leukemia (B-LL). Most flow cytometric strategies for detecting B cell malignancy utilize CD19 to identify B cells. With growing use of anti-CD19 targeted therapies, alternative strategies are needed for residual disease detection.

A Distributed Network for Intensive Longitudinal Monitoring in Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.

Accelerating cancer research is expected to require new types of clinical trials. This report describes the Intensive Trial of OMics in Cancer (ITOMIC) and a participant with triple-negative breast cancer metastatic to bone, who had markedly elevated circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that were monitored 48 times over 9 months. A total of 32 researchers from 14 institutions were engaged in the patient's evaluation; 20 researchers had no prior involvement in patient care and 18 were recruited specifically for this patient.

Expression of CD2 and CD25 on mast cell populations can be seen outside the setting of systemic mastocytosis.

Background: Systemic mastocytosis (SM) is a diagnosis made using clinical, laboratory, and histologic parameters. Aberrant CD2 and/or CD25 expression on mast cells provides one minor criterion for a diagnosis of SM. To validate a tube (CD45/CD117/CD2/CD25) for mast cell evaluation, flow cytometry (FC) on residual material from marrow aspirates samples submitted to the hematopathology laboratory was performed.

Blood cell origin of circulating microRNAs: a cautionary note for cancer biomarker studies.

Circulating, cell-free microRNAs (miRNAs) hold great promise as a new class of cancer biomarkers due to their surprisingly high stability in plasma, association with disease states, and ease of sensitive measurement. Yet little is known about the origin of circulating miRNAs in either healthy or sick people or what factors influence levels of circulating miRNA biomarkers. Of 79 solid tumor circulating miRNA biomarkers reported in the literature, we found that 58% (46 of 79) are highly expressed in one or more blood cell type.