New approach in the diagnosis and monitoring of treatment in chronic myelogenous leukemia

The chronic myelogenous leukemia is a pluripotent hemopoietic stem cell disease characterized by the t(9;22) (q34;q11) reciprocal chromosomal translocation (Philadelphia chromosome). The translocation result the fusion of the ABL gene located at the long arm of chromosome 9 with the BCR gene located at the long arm of chromosome 22. The BCR/ABL fusion gene encodes a chimeric protein with elevated tyrosine kinase activity, that plays an important role in the pathogenesis of the disease. In the diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia and in the evaluation of the therapeutic effect, the detection of the t(9;22)(q34;q11) translocation and BCR/ABL fusion gene plays an important role. The authors in the present paper provides a review on the recently used methods of the detection of t(9;22)(q34;q11) chromosomal translocation and BCR/ABL fusion gene and their role in the diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation of therapeutic effect in chronic myelogenous leukemia.