RT-PCR for the leukemia-associated antigens PRAME, RHAMM and WT-1. PBMCs of AML patients (>80% blasts; shown for two patients on lanes 1 and 3) were evaluated for the mRNA expression of three LAAs that are not expressed in PBMCs from healthy volunteers (lane 5) against the housekeeping genes beta-actin and TATA-box binding protein (TBP). AML-DCs (lanes 2 and 4) generated from the PBMCs of the respective AML patients (lanes 1 and 3) maintained the mRNA expression of these genes, which clearly demonstrates that they are blast-derived DCs. PBMCs and DCs from healthy volunteers (lanes 5 and 6) do not express these genes. K562 (lane 7) served as a positive control and distilled water (lane 8) as a negative control.