Methods and clinical relevance of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase determination in leukemic cells. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) is a unique DNA polymerase which is only found in immature cells of lymphoid lineage (pre-T/pre-B). Because of this restricted distribution of TdT, biochemical and immunofluorescence techniques have been employed to determine the distribution of TdT phenotypes in human leukemias and lymphomas, showing high levels of TdT in approximately 95% of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and lymphoblastic lymphoma (LBL), approximately 50% of patients with acute undifferentiated leukemia (AUL), approximately 10 of patients with acute nonlymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL), and approximately 30% of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and other myeloproliferative (MPS) or myelodysplastic (MDS) syndromes in blast crisis. High levels of TdT activity are associated with a clinical response to remission inducing therapy with vincristine and prednisone in a high proportion of patients (50%-90%), irrespective of clinical and morphologic diagnosis. Preliminary studies furthermore suggest that TdT might serve as a sensitive indicator of subclinical disease in ALL in complete remission.

publication date

  • January 1, 1981

Research

keywords

  • DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase
  • Leukemia
  • Lymphoma

Identity

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 0019765734

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1007/978-3-642-67984-1_10

PubMed ID

  • 6947940

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 26