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

急性髓细胞白血病（acute myelogenous leukemia，AML）是一种高致死性的恶性血液病。为了治愈AML患者，恶性白血病细胞应该从患者体内完全清除。大多数急性髓细胞白血病可通过强化化疗和/或骨髓移植获得完全缓解。白血病治疗中的主要问题是如何检测患者体内残留的白血病细胞以及如何根除这些残留的白血病细胞。为了预测AML患者的临床结局，我们研究了白血病原始祖细胞的生物学特性和WT-1基因的表达，白血病细胞的增殖由具有自我更新能力的白血病母细胞祖细胞的小亚群支持。自我更新能力已被证明与患者的预后显著相关。WT-1基因在24例患者中有22例表达。WT-1 mRNA的表达水平与白血病细胞增殖活性及AML患者的临床预后均无明显相关性，需要进一步研究以寻找能高度预测AML患者临床预后的标志物，并为AML患者制定最佳的治疗方案。

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.