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Single Cell Genotypic and Phenotypic Analysis of Measurable Residual Disease in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a group of blood cancers with high mortality. Even though complete remission is often achieved, majority of the AML patients still relapse. Measurable residual disease (MRD), defined as the population of cancer cells which persists following chemotherapy, is responsible for AML relapse. Understanding the biology enabling MRD clones to resist therapy is necessary to guide the development of curative treatments more effectively. Discriminating residual leukemic clones, preleukemic clones, and normal precursors remains a challenge with current MRD tools. We developed a single cell MRD (scMRD) assay by combining flow cytometric enrichment of the targeted precursor/blast population with integrated single cell DNA sequencing (scDNA-seq) and immunophenotyping (Tapestri, Missionbio). The platform utilizes a custom amplicon panel covering 109 amplicons across 31 genes frequently mutated in AML and a panel of 42 oligo-conjugated antibodies against surface makers. We applied our scMRD assay to sequence 30 MRD samples (multiplexed into 6) from 29 AML patients to study the clonal architecture and protein correlation. In addition, 2 MRD samples were sequenced with scDNA+protein sequencing technology without enrichment or multiplexing. Five patients with AML at diagnosis were also sequenced with scDNA+protein sequencing technology without enrichment or multiplexing. In order to establish the sensitivity of our scMRD assay, we spiked AML cells into normal bone marrow cells. We sequenced 12 such spiked samples after multiplexing.