New test creates exceptional security for leukemia patients after stem cell transplantation

50 molecular markers combined with highest sensitivity result in a dramatic improvement of chimerism monitoring.

Dresden, 18.01.2016 - Biotype Diagnostics new test procedure DIPscreen/DIPquant shows the success of stem cell transplantation with more than 50 genetic markers and highest precision.

If chemotherapy resistance was diagnosed, stem cell transplantation remains the only curative therapy for leukemia patients. In a high risk process healthy donor stem cells are transplanted to cancer patients. To monitor the effectiveness of this therapy and to early detect a high risk of a possible transplant rejection, the ratio of stem cell portions must be analyzed regularly.

In this process DNA polymorphisms serve to distinguish the donor stem cells from damaged patient stem cells. To achieve security in this diagnosis the largest possible number of specific patient DNA polymorphisms, so called informative loci, need to be identified and analyzed.

The new test of Biotype Diagnostic specially addresses this kind of analysis. It was validated in a clinical trial wherefore it is permitted for medical diagnostics. The special feature of this procedure is the very large number of genetic markers that can be analyzed.

Compared to conventional methods, the patient can now be assayed for more than 50 different DNA polymorphisms in one single run. This is made possible by multiplexing-technology, a core competence of Biotype. Further, Biotype selected insertion and deletion DNA polymorphisms (INDEL´s), since such genetic markers do not generate interfering “stutter-artefacts”. Together this allows the physician to identify a larger number of informative loci for the patient and to significantly detect very small variations in the stem cell shares.

Because the test can be combined with a second highly sensitive analysis of Biotype, physicians can further recognize signs of an impending disease relapse very much earlier. The new method thus achieves an unprecedented level of security and sensitivity for diagnosis and treatment in the fight against blood cancer.

Picture: A fundamental difference to conventional methods is not only the enormous number of loci analyzed, it is also the absence of interfering stutter-artefacts.