Evaluation of clinical performance of the major BCR-ABL mRNA detection kit which enables conversion to international standard scale using the reference material calibrator.

In a multicenter study, we evaluated the Major BCR-ABL mRNA/ABL mRNA quantification kit (M135R), which uses reference material included in the kit designed to report results using the international scale (IS). In total, 127 samples were studied. A good correlation was observed between M135R results and home-brew RT-qPCR results, which are reported on the IS using a conversion factor (r=0.90; n=115). However, the correlation coefficient between M135R results and Amp-CML results was relatively low (r=0.56; n=108). A good correlation was observed between M135R results from the two assay sites (r=0.94; n=115). The subset analysis of samples from the two assay sites showed M135R to have a good correlation even in the low IS range (r=0.98; IS≤1%). M135R showed high sensitivity and accuracy for detecting minimal residual disease and is considered to be a useful tool for treatment response assessment and for early detection of recurrence in CML patients.