High incidence of a second BCR-ABL fusion in chronic myeloid leukemia revealed by interphase cytogenetic analysis on blood and bone marrow smears

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) on peripheral blood smears for monitoring Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) during interferon treatment: A new strategy for remission assessment

“…Without FISH studies this would have been undetected since two consecutive cultures for CC were not successful. This confirms a reported finding that interphase cytogenetics is more sensitive than CC for the detection of the abnormality described (Cabot et al, 1996). It remains to be proved whether this is also true of other, additional aberrations that could be detected by different FISH probes.…”

High rate of chromosome abnormalities detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization using BCR and ABL probes in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia

“…Using different methods, FISH identified a BCR/ABL rearrangement in four of five, 15 and in all 11 selected ALL patients with a Ph translocation by cytogenetics and/or PCR. 16,22 In the light of the results from our series, neither classical cytogenetics, nor PCR or FISH have proven to represent a stand-alone technique for the reliable identification of Ph-positive ALL patients. Moreover, in this study, the combination of two of the three methods led to discrepant results in five (9.3%; FISH and PCR), six (11.1%; FISH and classical cytogenetics), and seven (13%; classical cytogenetics and PCR) cases.…”

“…20 The high value of FISH analysis with ABL and BCR probes in the initial diagnosis and for the detection of residual disease in CML patients has been demonstrated in several studies. [14][15][16][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] In ALL, the applicability of FISH to detect the BCR/ABL rearrangement has only been addressed in small series of selected patients and in single cases with variant Ph translocations. 15,16,20,29,30 Using FISH on interphase nuclei, a colocalization of a BCR and ABL hybridization spot may occur by chance due to the two-dimensional projection of the BCR and ABL hybridization signals of the three-dimensional nucleus, and thus lead to a false positive result.…”

Integration of amplified BCR/ABL fusion genes into the short arm of chromosome 17 as a novel mechanism of disease progression in chronic myeloid leukemia

“…They have been found in up to 3% of CML patients in the chronic phase (Kantarjian et al, 1985; Sokal et al, 1988) but in 16% to 25% of patients in the blastic phase (Kantarjian et al, 1987; Cervantes et al, 1990), leading to the assumption that they indicate disease progression. Cabot et al (1996), however, reported very high frequencies of a second BCR/ABL fusion signal in patients during advanced disease (52.9%), compared with 11.8% of patients showing an additional Ph chromosome by chromosome analysis. The discrepancies between FISH and chromosome analysis may be due to different mitotic activities of cells with and without an additional Ph chromosome.…”