Immuno-flowFISH in the assessment of paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the most common childhood malignancy and may be characterised by multiple known recurrent genetic aberrations including aneuploidy and translocations. Immuno-flowFISH is a novel technique that offers the ability to simultaneously perform immunophenotyping and FISH on thousands of intact cells in suspension. This thesis provides a review of the existing literature on paediatric ALL, analyses the current relevant literature on combined flow cytometry and FISH, and presents results of the first proof-of-concept analysis of immune-flowFISH data for 25 paediatric B lineage ALL cases with known hyperdiploidy with trisomy4.