Immunophenotyping of aneuploid cells.

This review article describes the MAC and MACISH (morphology, antibody, chromosomes, in situ hybridization) methods, which allow the examination of numerical chromosome abnormalities of morphologically and immunologically classified interphase or mitotic cells. Results of studies using these methods indicate that the proportion of mitotic B cells is the same in phytohemagglutinin- and pokeweed mitogen-stimulated lymphocyte cultures, that the proportions of different cell lineages vary greatly after short-term culture of bone marrow cells, that only B cells have a clonal chromosome abnormality in B-cell type chronic lymphatic leukemia and lymphoma, that a clonal chromosome abnormality of patients with T-cell lymphoma may occur in a different T cell subpopulation or at a different maturation stage in certain lineages while B cells show a normal karyotype, that only Reed-Sternberg cells have a clonal chromosome abnormality in Hodgkin's disease, and that in a proportion of patients with acute myeloid leukemia not only a granulocytic-monocytic lineage but also erythrocytic and megakaryocytic lineages show a clonal chromosome abnormality.