Immunological definition of leukemic cell surface phenotypes.

Immunological phenotyping of blasts from over 200 children with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) reveals both interpatient differences and phenotypic heterogeneity in the blast population from individual patients. A battery of five independent lymphocyte differentiation markers, erythrocyte-forming rosettes. T-cell antigens, Ia-like antigens, the common ALL antigen, and surface immunoglobulin, permit classification of all ALL specimens into four major marker groups. These are common, T-cell, B-cell, and undifferentiated ALL. Heterogeneity in the marker phenotypes within each of the major groups is observed. Within individual erythrocyte receptor-positive ALL specimens, phenotypic heterogeneity in the blast population is demonstrated. Sequential determinations of the blast phenotype during periods of active disease reveal a second example of intrapatient blast cell heterogeneity. Differences in phenotype of the dominant blast populations present prior to treatment and at relapse are observed in sequential studies of individual patients. These shifts in phenotype are nonrandom. They result most frequently from losses in single differentiation markers. A unifying hypothesis which explains these observations of phenotypic heterogeneity is that ALL blasts manifest limited lymphoid-like differentiation.