ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: To further explore and objectively evaluate the clinical application of cell immunophenotypic assay in diagnosing immunophenotype and subtype of AL, twelve types of monoclonal antibodies typically used in the clinic were selected for this study. Among 56 patients with newly diagnosed AML, 54 of them were consistent with the results of the immunophenotypic assay. Moreover, all types expressed three or more types of the myeloid antigens, especially CD13 and CD33, and the antigens were expressed at relatively high levels. CD14 antigens were highly expressed in monocytic leukemia cells (M4, M5a, M5b). In M3, there was no positive expression of CD34 antigen, and HLA-DR expression rate was also very low. Except for the 5 AML patients with expression of the lymphoid antigen CD7, about 90% of the patients did not express this particular lymphoid antigen. The results also showed that a misdiagnosis was observed in 2 patients previously categorized by the morphological classification. Hybrid acute leukemia (HAL) expressed at least both the myeloid and lymphoid antigens. Acute megakaryocytic leukemia (M7) mainly expressed CD41 and CD61 antigens. Furthermore, using immunophenotypic assay, 28 patients with ALL were accurately divided into T-ALL, B-ALL and TB-ALL. In addition to the latter, the B-lineage antigens and T-lineage antigens were not mutually expressed and showed strong characteristics of lineage-specific expression, but were also found to express myeloid and lymphoid antigens. T/B-ALL simultaneously expressed both T-lineage and B-lineage antigens. Conclusions Overall, the cell immunophenotypic assay can provide objective and accurate data for diagnosing immunophenotype and subtype of AL, which shows significant improvement over the morphological classification. Immunophenotyping also has improved clinical application that allows dierentiation between the AML and ALL subgroups.
