Case report: diagnostics in Germany

The European patent in question, which has since expired, covered a process for diagnosing the chances of survival for a patient who suffered from acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). It was based on the finding that a certain percentage of patients carrying tandem duplications in a defined portion of the gene encoding a specific receptor tyrosine kinase had a worse prognosis as compared to patients who did not carry this type of mutation. The tandem duplications were easily detectable since they resulted in an elongation of this portion of the gene.