The scientists at Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkotta has bagged a United States patent for a novel process useful in diagnosing, monitoring treatment outcome, and predicting relapse of lymphoblastic leukemia.

The IICB, a constituent institution of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), invented a novel process for the preparation of a biomarker specific for O-acetylated sialic acid useful for the specific purpose, it is learnt.

A main advantage of the present invention is to provide a method for the preparation of antibodies specific for O-acetylated sialic acid, useful for the diagnosis, monitoring outcome of treatment and prediction of relapse of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

It provides a process for the quantification of the anti-antibody specific for O-acetylated sialic acid present in the serum of ALL patient with the help of a simple, specific, sensitive, non-invasive and economical bovine submaxillary mucin ELISA which allows the assessment of the treatment outcome of ALL patients.

It is also known that the invention is to provide a method for the diagnosis, monitoring outcome of treatment and prediction of relapse of ALL.

The process comprises of the steps of separating serum from the blood of ALL patients, separation of low molecular weight fractions and galactose binding proteins from the serum on affinity matrix; passing the galactose free protein fraction obtained over another affinity matrix to capture O-acetyl sialic acid specific protein fraction; eluting specific protein fraction with a buffer at alkaline pH in the range of 8.0-11.0 followed by immediate neutralization of the fraction.

The IICB had filed a patent application for the process in 1999 and received US Patent (US Patent: 6,693,177) on February 17, 2004. The scientists who were part of the invention are Chitra Mandal, Santanu Pal and Mitali Chatterjee, it is learnt.

IICB is a premier institution engaged in research on diseases of national importance and biological problems of global interest, employing sophisticated state-of-the-art technology in keeping with the rapid and unprecedented momentum that life science research has gained globally over the last 50 years. The scientific staff has expertise in a variety of areas including chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, neurobiology and immunology which promotes productive interdisciplinary interaction.