Rapid automated detection of ABL kinase domain mutations in imatinib-resistant patients

ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), imatinib is used for BCR–ABL + leukemias. We developed an automatic method utilizing guanine-quenching probes (QP) to detect 17 kinds of mutations frequently observed in imatinib-resistance. Results were obtained from 100 μL of whole blood within 90 min by this method. Detected mutations were almost identical between QP method and direct sequencing. Furthermore, the mutation-biased PCR (MBP) was added to the QP method to increase sensitivity, resulting earlier detection of T315I mutation which was insensitive to any ABL TKIs. Thus, the QP and MBP-QP may become useful methods for the management of ABL TKI-treated patients.