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OF PROGRESS IN CHEMOTHERAPY TREATMENT FOR CHILDHOOD LEUKEMIA PATIENTS USING FTIR
MICROSPECTROSCOPY AND CLUSTER ANALYSIS
Abstract
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common malignancy in children. Remarkable progress made in the methods of chemotherapy has increased the cure rate to 80%. The leukemic cells called blasts are eliminated within seven days of chemotherapy treatment. Clinically, the blast count is monitored directly using blood smears by the specific genetic markers and immunophenotyping methods such as flow cytometry. In this article, we present a novel approach to monitor the progress made due to chemotherapy in one B and two T cell ALL child patients using recent novel optical method called FTIR-microspectroscopy (FTIR-MC) and cluster analysis. Our results indicated that the biological marker derived from the spectra could not provide accurate prediction of the progress made due to chemotherapy. However the simple cluster analysis of FTIR spectra provided good classification of the samples with and without blasts, which correlate satisfactorily with clinical data. This report is an example of the potential application of FTIR-MC in the diagnosis and follow-up of various types of malignancies.