Identification of variant translocations in chronic myeloid leukemia by fluorescence in situ hybridization

We studied two cases of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) having variant complexes translocations detected by trypsin G-banding and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Application of dual color- (DC-) FISH using abl and bcr cosmid probes permitted us to detect the bcr-abl fusion event on both interphase nuclei and metaphase spread. Furthermore, FISH using combinatorial hybridization (centromeric-library and library-library probes) demonstrated the content and the position of the translocations in CML patients with variant (complex type) Ph-positive rearrangements. FISH analysis appears to be superior than conventional cytogenetic analysis.