In vitro cellular drug resistance adds prognostic information to other known risk-factors in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Leukemic cells from 230 children with newly diagnosed B-cell precursor ALL were tested for in vitro drug resistance to a panel of anti-cancer drugs. Minimal residual disease (MRD) was measured by RQ-PCR. During follow-up, 24 relapses occurred in the 159 children with MRD <0.1% day 29. The risk of any relapse was correlated to vincristine and doxorubicin resistance, with a relative risk of 3.7 (95% CI 1.3-10.5; p = 0.016) for patients resistant to both drugs. There was a significant correlation also for the subgroup with extra-medullary relapses. Our findings indicate that analysis of drug resistance can add prognostic information to other known risk-factors including MRD.