Immune Profiling Initiative Aims to Improve Bone Marrow Analysis in Leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer in which assessing disease burden after therapy can help guide clinical evaluation. Patients with measurable residual disease (MRD) after treatment have a five-year overall survival rate of approximately 34%, compared with 68% for those without detectable MRD.

To support more detailed assessment, a new collaboration aims to develop immune profiling tests that combine stabilized bone marrow samples with high-parameter spectral flow analysis to measure disease burden before and after treatment.

Image: Acute myeloid leukemia is the first of several disease areas the collaborators plan to pursue together as part of efforts to advance precision diagnostics (Image Credit: Adobe Stock)

Teiko (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) will collaborate with University of Utah Health and Huntsman Cancer Institute to develop a series of immune profiling tests, beginning with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The initial AML study launches a broader, long-term collaboration between the organizations, with University of Utah Health Innovations becoming an investor in Teiko as part of the initiative.

The study will combine Teiko’s stabilization kit with a high-parameter spectral flow panel for analyzing bone marrow. In initial testing, the kit fixed bone marrow at the point of collection, extending the processing window from 72 hours to 90 days. This longer window is intended to enable community hospitals to ship specimens to a central laboratory while also supporting biobanking for future analysis.

The work addresses the demanding analytical requirements of multiparameter flow cytometry, which is used in more than 60% of AML measurable residual disease assessments. To detect residual disease, the method must reliably identify leukemic cells at frequencies as low as 0.01–0.1% of total cells. Guidelines recommend acquiring at least 500,000–1,000,000 CD45-positive events, with adequate cell viability, to achieve this limit of detection.

Current workflows require bone marrow processing within 24 to 72 hours of collection. Even within that window, storage and transit time can degrade sample quality, limiting high-quality measurable residual disease testing largely to specialized laboratories capable of rapid processing. AML is the first of several disease areas the collaborators plan to pursue together as part of efforts to advance precision diagnostics.

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