The establishment of the method which detects the minimal residual leukemic cells in acute myelogenous patients in remisson and predicts the patients prognosis.

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Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is highly lethal malignant hemopathy. To cure AML patients, malignant leukemic cells should be completely purged from the patients. Most of AML can achieve complete remission by intensive chemotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation. Some of them, however, suffer from the relapse of AML.The major issue in leukemia therapy is how to detect the residual leukemic cells in patients and how to eradicate such residual leukemic cells.To predict the clinical outcome of AML patients, we have studied the biological properties of leukemic blast progenitors and the gene expression of WT-1 mRNA.The proliferation of leukemic cells is supported by a small subpopulation of leukemic blast progenitors with self-renewal capacity. The self-renewal capacity has been shown to significantly correlate with the patients prognosis. WT-1 gene was expressed in 22 of 24 patients studied. The expression level of WT-l mRNA, however, was not correlated with either the proliferation activity of leukemic or clinical outcome of AML patients.Further studies are necessary to find any marker that can highly predict the clinical prognosis of AML patients and to establish optimal treatment protocol tailored for each AML patient.