[Analysis of P-glycoprotein in patients with acute leukemias by flow cytometry]

The identification of a P-glycoprotein product of multidrug-resistant gene (mdr 1) was reported recently. To examine the expression of the P-glycoprotein in acute leukemias of various types, we have prepared leukemic blast cells from patients and measured their positivity of P-glycoprotein using monoclonal anti-P-glycoprotein antibody (C219) by flow cytometry. P-glycoprotein is expressed in 8 out of 44 cases including leukemic blast cells but not lymphocytes and monocytes. In these cases showed drug resistance was shown clinically. In addition, the expression of the P-glycoprotein was not observed in the drug-sensitive cases and at the time of initial chemotherapy. Our results suggest that measurement of P-glycoprotein in acute leukemias by flow cytometry may prove to be a valuable tool for the design of chemotherapy protocols.