Clinical and biological characterization of children with FLT3-ITD-mutated acute myeloid leukemia

We examined if the minimal residual disease (MRD) and the Allelic Ratio (AR) of FLT3 internal tandem duplication (ITD) mutated patients may be prognostic factors. We correlated these parameters both with event free survival (EFS), with incidence of relapse and with gene expression profile (GEP). GEP showed that patients with high-ITD-AR or persistent MRD had different expression profiles. Results indicated that the ITD-AR levels and the MRD after I induction course are associated with transcriptional oncogenic profiles, which highlight differences in epigenetic control that may explain the variability in outcome among FLT3-ITD patients 100 ng of bone marrow RNA from 14 patients with de novo AML harboring FLT3-ITD mutation at diagnosis were hybridized on the GeneChip® Human Transcriptome Array 2.0. Class comparisons between different patient subgroups (high vs low Allelic Ratio, good vs poor responders) were performed.