Comparison between CD19 and CD20 expression patterns on acute leukemic cells.

Abstract

In order to provide the evidences for CD19 as a better antibody targeting molecule for B lineage acute leukemias than CD20 through the multi-parameter flow-cytometry analysis of leukemia cells, the samples from 321 patients with acute leukemia (AL) were immunophenotyped by multi-color flow cytometry and CD45/SSC gating strategy followed by the analysis of CD19 and CD20 expression. The results showed that the positive rate of CD19 (115/116, 99.1%) in 116 cases with B lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B lineage ALL) was significantly higher than that of CD20 (33/116, 28.4%) (P < 0.01); in 17 patients with B lineage/Myeloid (B/My) acute mixed lineage leukemia (AMLL), the former positive rate (17/17, 100%) was also higher than the latter (5/17, 29.4%) (P < 0.01). Both of the two antigens were negative in 29 patients with acute T lymphoblastic leukemia and 7 patients with T/My AMLL. The positive rates of CD19 and CD20 in 152 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were 7.2% and 2.0%, respectively. The difference of the fluorescence intensity between the two antigens on the cells from each patient with B lineage ALL or B/My AMLL was statistically significant (t = 20.68, P < 0.001). The specificity of CD19 and CD20 in B lymphocytic lineage was 92.3% (132/143) and 92.7% (38/41), respectively, while the sensitivity was 99.2% (132/133) and 28.6% (38/133), respectively, the former sensitivity was significantly higher than the latter (chi(2) = 144.018, P = 0.001). It is concluded that CD19 continuously and steadily express on almost all subtypes of B lineage leukemic cells with homogeneous pattern while only a small number of leukemias express CD20. Both the specificity and sensitivity of CD19 were very high with a much broader reaction pattern than that of CD20 on this group of diseases. These indicate that CD19 may be a better antibody targeting molecule than CD20 for patients with B-lineage acute leukemia.