Ligandless receptors find a role

摘要

The discovery that patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who showed somatic hypermutation of their im-munoglobulin heavy chain variable region genes (IGHV) lived on average 3 times longer than those who did not revolutionized the study of CLL and has greatly influenced the design and understanding of clinical trials. Assaying for such mutations seems complicated, and the prospect is sufficiently intimidating to deter most routine laborato-ries from offering the test. Instead, there has been a search for a surrogate marker, especially one that can be assayed by a familiar technique such as flow cytometry