Efficacy of Chemotherapy in Acute Leukemia Patients Resistant to Previous Standard Treatment According to the Series Measurement of WT1 Gene Expression

Aim. To estimate the efficacy of chemotherapy in acute leukemia patients resistant to previous standard treatment according to the series measurement of WT1 expression. Materials & Methods. The series measurement of WT1 expression formed the basis of the efficacy estimation of induction chemotherapy in 31 patients (15 men and 16 women aged from 3 months to 68 years; the median age was 28 years) with prognostically unfavourable variants of acute myeloid (AML) and lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (23 AML and 8 ALL patients). The WT1 gene expression was measured at baseline and 2–3 weeks after the treatment by the quantitative real-time PCR. The threshold level for detection was 250 copies of WT1/104 copies of ABL. The cytogenetic profile of leukemia cells was assessed by standard cytogenetics and FISH. Results. The baseline expression level of WT1 varied from 305 to 58,569 copies/104 copies of ABL. The expected reduction of WT1 expression after the first induction chemotherapy treatment was reported in 22/23 (96 %) AML patients and in 6/8 (75 %) ALL patients. According to our results WT1 expression reached the threshold in 13/31 (42 %) patients, including 9 AML patients and 4 ALL patients. After 11/31 (35 %) patients received the second course of treatment, WT1 expression level became normal in 8 cases (5 ALL and 3 AML patients). Despite high dose chemotherapy, HSCT and such agents as blinatumomab and gemtuzumab, an unfavourable outcome was observed in 18/31 (58 %) patients including 6 patients with complex karyotype (CK+) and 2 patients with monosomal karyotype (MK+). Once the MK+ and CK+ combination was observed, in another case the MK+ was combined with the prognostically unfavourable inv(3)(q21q26) inversion. Conclusion. Our results show that the molecular monitoring should be included as part of treatment of the prognostically unfavourable acute leukemia. The WT1 gene was shown to be the most appropriate marker. WT1 expression was shown to correlate with the common fusion genes allowing to estimate the blast cell count at the molecular level

Role of Positron-Emission Tomography in Prognosis of Outcomes of High-Dose Chemotherapy with Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

Aim. To perform a comparative analysis of the prognostic significance of positron-emission tomography (PET) with other prognostic factors of the efficacy of high-dose chemotherapy (HDCT) with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (auto-HSCT) in patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Methods. Data on 84 patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma receiving treatment over the period from October 2007 till November 2015 were analyzed. The median age was 26.6 years (range: 10–62). The median follow-up was 25 months (range: 1–81 months). The prognostic significance of sex, response to the initial chemotherapy, time to relapse, second-line chemotherapy regimen type, B-symptoms, tumor size (>5 cm in cases of relapse prior to the HDCT), serum LDH and albumin levels, CT findings, the number of chemotherapy lines, conditioning regimen before the auto-HSCT, and the metabolic activity before the HDCT (PET1, n = 82) and after auto-HSCT (PET2, n = 57) was analyzed. Results. The two-year overall (OS) and event-free (EFS) survival rates were 70.6 % and 58.7%, respectively. Prognosis was the worst in patients with CT-confirmed lymphoma progression by the initiation of HDCT. In the presence of a CT-response, the PET status of lymphoma has a prognostic significance. The 2-year OS and EFS rates of PET1-negative and PET1-positive patients were 82 % vs. 62 % (p = 0.056) and 74 % vs. 44 % (p = 0.003), respectively. In PET2-negative and PET2-positive patients, the OS and EFS rates were 90 % vs. 65 % (p = 0.013) and 72 % vs. 52 % (p = 0.014), respectively. From the prognostic point of view, PET2 findings prevailed over PET1 findings. The multivariate analysis confirmed only PET2 significance for OS prediction. Conclusion. The tumor sensitivity to the chemotherapy assessed by the CT is the most important prognostic factor. In case of a positive CT dynamics, the achievement of PET1 or PET2 negativity before or after HDCT/auto-HSCT is a favorable prognostic factor. The worst prognosis was observed in patients with tumor metabolic activity before or after HDCT/auto-HSCT