Molecular techniques for the personalised management of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is the paradigm for targeted cancer therapy. RT-qPCR is the gold standard for monitoring response to tyrosine kinase-inhibitor (TKI) therapy based on the reduction of blood or bone marrow BCR-ABL1. Some patients with CML and very low or undetectable levels of BCR-ABL1 transcripts can stop TKI-therapy without CML recurrence. However, about 60 percent of patients discontinuing TKI-therapy have rapid leukaemia recurrence. This has increased the need for more sensitive and specific techniques to measure residual CML cells. The clinical challenge is to determine when it is safe to stop TKI-therapy. In this review we describe and critically evaluate the current state of CML clinical management, different technologies used to monitor measurable residual disease (MRD) focus on comparingRT-qPCR and new methods entering clinical practice. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of new methods.

A pragmatic approach to the analysis of a combination formulation

The aim of the paper was to formulate a combined oral dosage form of rosuvastatin calcium and amlodipine besylate and to develop and validate an analytical method to be adopted for both routine quality control assay and in vitro dissolution studies of the formulation.

The proposed combination formulation has shown compatibility with the chosen excipients, verified through FT-IR study. A novel gradient RP-HPLC method was developed and validated according to the ICH guideline which was found to be suitable for the simultaneous estimation of rosuvastatin calcium and amlodipine besylate from the formulation. The retention time of 2.7 and 6.08 min allows the analysis of large amount of samples with less mobile phase which makes the method economic. The dissolution profiles of both the drugs in different dissolution medium were encouraging which makes the combination formulation of rosuvastatin calcium and amlodipine besylate superior and effective in achieving patient compliance.