Results of quality control/quality assurance study for the comparability of the results of flow cytometric minimal residual disease studies in B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia in Russian laboratories of the Moscow–Berlin study group

Résumé fourni par la source

Aim of the study – comparison of results of flow cytometric minimal residual disease (MRD) detection in B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia in two Russian laboratories of the Moscow–Berlin study group. Materials and methods. Ring trial was performed in three rounds. Four flow cytometry specialist from Dmitry Rogachev Center (Moscow) and two from Regional Children Hospital (Ekaterinburg) were suggested to analyze cytometric files of 70 studies of bone marrow samples obtained at various time-points during different treatment phases. Results and discussion. Although false-positive and false-negative results were obtained by single specialists in exact cases, the overall comparability of MRD data was very high. Found discrepancies were observed mainly in cases with very low MRD burden (below 0.01%). Also discordant results were observed in patients with CD10-negative immunophenotype. Nevertheless, in all samples the majority of the documented results were right. Presence of the most experienced expert in each laboratory, who is responsible for the final conclusion on MRD samples, led to the high inter-laboratory concordance. Conclusion. Therefore, discussion of all complicated cases with the most experienced specialists, centralization of the primary immunophenotyping, clinical application of the most reproducible MRD thresholds, as well as further improvement of flow cytometry methodology and technology harmonization will allow achieving perfect reproducibility of the flow cytometric MRD detection in patients with B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.