Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a heterogeneous group of disorders that originates from B- and T-cell progenitors.1,2 Different B- and T-cell ALL can be recognized according to immunologic and molecular criteria.3-5 The identification of the molecular events underlying the process of leukemia transformation has provided not only important biological information,5-7 but also clinically relevant genetic markers for the identification of prognostically relevant ALL subgroups and for the molecular monitoring of minimal residual disease (MRD). For ALL, immunoglobulin (IG) and T-cell receptor (TCR) gene rearrangement studies are used as markers of clonality and for MRD detection, and the identification of different genetic variations is used to define different ALL subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]