Global gene expression analysis of CD10+/CD19+ pre B lymphoblasts from bone marrow and peripheral blood of B-ALL patients

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most frequent childhood cancer. Mexico City has one of the highest incidences in the world, with pediatric patients showing a poor response to conventional therapy, low survival rates and high relapse rates. We performed a global gene expression profile of pre B lymphoblasts from bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) samples from B-ALL patients to find the upregulated and downregulated genes in both cell populations in the context of this childhood cancer. We implemented a flourescence activated cell sorting (FACS) protocol to isolate CD10+/CD19+ precursor B (pre-B) lymphoblasts from four bone marrow (BM) and nine peripheral blood (PB) samples of B-ALL patients for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays We sought to prevent contamination with other mononuclear or non-leukemic cells and have high purity RNA. This would allow to obtain more accurate data on the gene expression from both pre-B lymphoblasts populations in mexican pediatric patients.