Clinical implications of gene expression profiling of acute myeloid leukemia

Since the first demonstration in 1999 that gene expression profiling could distinguish between different variants of acute leukemia, several studies have analyzed patients with acute myeloid leukemia on the basis of cytogenetics, morphologic subgroups, secondary mutations such as FLT3, prognosis, and therapeutic response. This review examines some of these data and attempts to discuss whether these analyses will have clinical applications in diagnosis, prediction of prognosis and response to therapy, disease classification, or individually targeted therapy. It is probable that all these areas will reach the clinical environment eventually, but in the short to medium term, microarrays will be involved only in diagnosis.