Incidence and Prognostic Significance of Immunophenotypic Subgroups in Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Experience of the BFM Study 86

Due to the increasing availability of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) recognizing lymphoid-, myeloid-, and progenitor-cell-associated antigens, immunophenotyping has greatly influenced studies on the biologic features of normal and leukemic hematopoietic progenitor cells (Greaves 1986). It has become possible to demonstrate the practical value of these data for the precise diagnosis and definition of clinically relevant immunophenotypic subsets of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (Janossy et al. 1989). More recently, immunophenotyping has been supplemented by cytogenetic and molecular-genetic analyses in order to better characterize the biologic heterogeneity of ALL and to elucidate the mechanisms of lymphoid cell transformation and aberrant regulation of leukemic cell growth (Look 1988; Bain and Catovsky 1990; Pui et al. 1990c; van Dongen and Wolvers-Tettero 1991).