210P Ultra-sensitive monitoring of leukemia patients using superRCA mutation detection assays

Abstract

Rare tumor-specific mutations in patient samples serve as excellent markers to monitor the course of malignant disease and responses to therapy in clinical routine, and improved assay techniques are needed for broad adoption. We describe herein - superRCA assays - which provides for rapid and highly specific detection of DNA sequence variants present at very low frequencies in DNA samples. Using a standard flow cytometer we demonstrate precise, ultra-sensitive detection of single-nucleotide mutant sequences from malignant cells against a 100,000-fold excess of DNA, to follow the course of patients treated for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).