Prevalence of BCR/ABL Fusion Gene Expression in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients: A Single Center Study Fathalla Lamiaa A.1, Hassan Naglaa M.1, ElGebaly Omnia K.1, Gammal Mosaad M. El2, Allam Rasha Mahmoud3, Elgamal Basma M.1 1Clinical Pathology department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt 2Medical Oncology department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt 3Biostatistics and Cancer Epidemiology Department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt Online published on 4 April, 2020. Abstract Introduction One of the evolving defects in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the BCR/ABL fusion which is the trigger of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Differentiating Ph +ve AML from CML in blast crisis is an ongoing challenge. In our study, we tried to differentiate between both categories and determine the prevalence of this rare entity as well as its clinical and laboratory features. Patients and Method We enrolled in our study 175 patients from the National Cancer Institute, Egypt; Conventional Karyotyping and qualitative RT PCR for BCR/ABL fusion proteins were done for all the patients. Positive cases were confirmed by FISH. Results Five/175 patients were shown to have BCR/ABL translocation with an incidence of 2.8%. Four out of the five cases were having fusion protein p210 by RT PCR, while the fifth case was having neither p210 nor p190. Most criteria of differentiation were intermingling together. Conclusion Further studies should be done to confirm or exclude this provisional entity. Moreover, introduction of BCR/ABL analysis in the routine may be a useful tool for introducing TKIs in these patients, which may improve the survival. Top Keywords BCR/ABL, Ph +ve AML, qualitative RT PCR. Top |