Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MSc (Reproductive Biology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Urology / unrestricted

With a continuous development of molecular-biology methods more attention has been paid to molecular detection of minimal residual diseases in solid tumors. In our study we focused on detection of MRD in neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is one of the peripheral neuroblastic tumors (pNTs) that accounts approximately for10 percent of all childhood cancers. The question raised however not answered until this day is whether evidence of MRD in bone marrow may be used as independent prognostic factor in diagnosis of neuroblastoma. Furthermore, it is important to establish what kind of testing technique should be used and what values to look at. There exist various methodologies in detection of MRD evidence in neuroblastoma. These methods differ in cost and complexity, but mainly some of them are more specific and sensitive than the other. Cancer cells may be detected in the blood as well as in the bone marrow. Very often it is the bone marrow that is affected by the metastasis in neuroblastoma, therefore 85% of all high risk neuroblastomas show positive results in the standard cytomorphology tests of bone marrow. Low numbers of cancer cells in bone marrow or peripheral blood (especially during or after the end of treatment) are below the standard values of detection limit in most of the classic methodologies...