Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia or CLL is the most common form of leukemia in adults and has a highly variable outcome. Patients experience prolonged periods of disease stabilization – the cancer is neither decreasing nor increasing in extent or severity. But at any given time, CLL can progress very fast, requiring appropriate treatment adjustments to keep progression at bay. Genetic analysis is an important tool in the differential diagnosis and distinguishes between ‘stable disease’ and ‘progression’.
Multiplicom’s new test helps to steer the treatment options to stabilize the disease. It detects single nucleotide variants as well as copy number alterations. The identification of mutations in TP53, BIRC3, NOTCH1 and SF3B1 enables a more refined prognostic stratification, while the detection of TP53 mutations has therapeutic value as it guides treatment with alemtuzumab and/or steroids, which may be followed by allogeneic stem cell transplantation.
