Skip to main content
. 2019 Oct 23;11(11):1625. doi: 10.3390/cancers11111625

Table 2.

Comparison of different approaches to analyze measurable residual disease (MRD).

Method Sensitivity Advantage Disadvantage
Conventional Morphology: blast count 1 in 20 cells - -
FISH: numeric and structural cytogenetic aberrations 1 in 100–500 cells
  • -

    standardized

  • -

    widely available
  • -

    insensitive

  • -

    limited patients with aberrant karyotype (appr. 50%)
MFC: LAIP, DfN 1 in 1000–100,000
  • -

    applicable to nearly all AML cases (90%)

  • -

    can distinguish viable from death cells

  • -

    short turn around time
  • -

    operator-dependent, high experience needed

  • -

    lower sensitivity and specificity than PCR

  • -

    difficult to standardize

  • -

    leukemic phenotype can change over time
qRT-PCR: molecular aberrations 1 in 100,000–1,000,000 cells
  • -

    high sensitivity

  • -

    high specificity

  • -

    existing standardization efforts

  • -

    operator-independent

  • -

    short turn around time

  • -

    widely available
  • -

    restricted applicability to patients harboring the specific target (30–50%)
NGS: molecular aberrations 1 in 100,000–1,000,000 cells
  • -

    high sensitivity

  • -

    allows to analyze a large number of mutations in a single experiment

  • -

    easy to perform
  • -

    new methodology

  • -

    currently not widely available

  • -

    CHIP mutations can be detected in healthy people or may persist in AML remission

  • -

    limited standardization

  • -

    intrinsic error rate may limit sensitivity

Abbreviations: CHIP, clonal hematopoiesis of indetermined potential; DfN, different from normal; FISH, fluorescence in situ hybridization; LAIP, leukemia-associated immunophenotype; MFC, multicolor flow cytometry; NGS, next generation sequencing; qRT-PCR, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction.