Comparison of SPE, IFE, and FLC in Monitoring Patients with Multiple Myeloma After Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation.

Conventionally, serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) and serum immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE) are used as primary methods to diagnose and monitor multiple myeloma (MM). Recently, serum-free light chain (FLC) assay has been incorporated into hematological screening programs for myeloma. The purpose of this study is to compare the performance of the three methods in monitoring MM patients after autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). SPE, serum IFE and serum FLC assay were performed on 38 MM patients who underwent ASCT. In total, four patients had unexpected protein bands (UPBs) and 13 patients had relapsed after ASCT. Our results indicate that IFE is more sensitive than SPE and FLC assay in detection of UPBs and relapse. The results of IFE may provide useful information in advance of patient relapse.

[Quantitative monitoring of multi-donor chimerism after multi-donor allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation].

This study was aimed to establish a model for detecting the donor chimerism rate following the multi-donor hematopoietic stem cell transplantations, and simplify its calculation method. Patients with hematologic disease receiving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation including single-donor and multi-donor were selected in this study and the donor cell chimerism rates were detected, using STR-PCR combined with capillary electrophoresis. The results indicated that the peaks of the sister alleles coming from the same individual were confirmed to have the approximate areas and can be replaced each other in the situation of mixed chimerism. In the calculation model, the value between reference chimerism and approximate chimerism have no significant difference using the hypothetical peak areas, and the result was confirmed to be accepted basing on typical measurement error between sister alleles (5% - 20%). It is concluded that the areas of share peaks can be replaced by non-share peaks and this conclusion can be used to calculate the double-donor CHM (DD-CHM)(%). Compared to the D alleles, R alleles show more strategic importance because it can lead to more accurate result and allowed simplifying the arithmetic calculations for DD-CHM(%).