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Introduction: White blood cell (WBC) differential by flow cytometry can report a six‐part WBC differential and enumerate blasts. Some modern hematology analyzers are also able to provide a six‐part WBC differential (including immature granulocytes). Our goal was to compare the WBC differential obtained by the Abbott Alinity hq hematology analyzer to an 8‐color single‐tube flow cytometry method and to manual WBC differential. Methods: Samples from 144 patients were tested with Alinity hq, flow cytometry, and microscopic WBC differential. The WBC count ranged from 1.22 to 359 × 109/L, and 34 samples were flagged by the analyzer for abnormal WBC morphology. Results: Strong concordance was demonstrated between Alinity hq and flow cytometry for all six components of the differential, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.86 (basophils) to 1.00 (lymphocytes). Small, clinically insignificant positive difference was observed between Alinity hq and flow cytometry for mature and total neutrophils (2.51% and 1.85%) and eosinophils (0.14%), and small negative difference for immature granulocytes (−0.65%), lymphocytes (−0.61%), and basophils (−0.21%). No bias was detected between the Alinity hq and flow cytometry monocyte counts. Alinity hq and flow cytometry results agreed with the manual differential, apart from small, clinically insignificant differences. Alinity hq nucleated red blood cell concentrations were equivalent with the manual results (r = 0.95, slope = 1.16). The percentage of blasts by flow cytometry demonstrated good correlation and agreement with the manual count (r = 0.99, slope = 1.35). Conclusion: Alinity hq has produced accurate six‐part WBC differential in this three‐way comparison, equivalent to flow cytometry and morphological classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: High purity of tumour samples is a necessity for accurate genetic and expression analysis and is usually achieved by positive selection in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). Results: We adapted a bifunctional rosette-based antibody cocktail for negative selection of B-cells for isolating CLL cells from peripheral blood (PB). PB samples from CLL patients were split into aliquots. One aliquot of each sample was enriched by density gradient centrifugation (DGC), while the other aliquot of each sample was incubated with an antibody cocktail for B-cell enrichment prior to DGC (RS+DGC). The purity of CLL cells after DGC averaged 74.1% (range: 15.9 - 97.4%). Using RS+DGC, the purity averaged 93.8% (range: 80.4 - 99.4%) with 23 of 29 (79%) samples showing CLL purities above 90%. RNA extracted from enriched CLL cells was of appropriately high quality for microarray analysis. Conclusion: This study confirms the use of a bifunctional rosette-based antibody cocktail as an effective method for the purification of CLL cells from peripheral blood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented regarding minimal residual disease (MRD) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) monitoring in the post-allogenic transplant period.