LightCycler-based quantitative real-time PCR monitoring of patients with follicular lymphoma receiving rituximab in combination with conventional or high-dose cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Objectives: Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is a suitable method to measure residual disease in hematological malignancies. Our objective was to assess a LightCycler-based qPCR for t(14;18)(q32;q21)(IgH/bcl-2)-positive cells quantification in the context of clinical and morphopathological characteristics of patients with follicular lymphoma treated with rituximab (R) in combination with conventional or high-dose chemotherapy.

Methods: A total of 270 bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) samples collected from 52 patients with follicular lymphoma at diagnosis or at relapse before or sequentially during therapy were examined by qPCR and nested-PCR.

Quantitative real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction for diagnosis of BCR-ABL positive leukemias and molecular monitoring following allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) (qPCR) of the BCR-ABL mRNA is a suitable technique to measure the amount of circulating leukemic cells in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). In this study, we evaluated a BCR-ABL-specific qPCR method using the LightCycler technology in 95 patients with Philadelphia chromosome positive acute leukemia (n = 7) or CML in different stages (n = 88). Primers and hybridization probes were chosen to detect the most prevalent variants of BCR-ABL (b2a2, b3a2, b2a3, b3a3, e19a2, e1a2) with a sensitivity of 10-5 for b2a2 and b3a2.