Minimal residual diseae in myeloma – pro
Assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) is becoming standard diagnostic care for potentially curable neoplasms such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In multiple myeloma (MM), the majority of patients will inevitably relapse despite achievement of progressively higher complete remission (CR) rates. Extensive data indicate that MRD information can potentially be used as biomarker to evaluate the efficacy of different treatment strategies, help on treatment decisions, and act as surrogate for overall survival. However, how to use ther esults of this tsting is not yet well known. AA recent review by Paiva et al cocludes that: “The time has come to address within clinical trials the exact role of baseline risk factors and MRD monitoring for tailored therapy in MM, which implies systematic usage of highly sensitive, cost-effective, readily available, and standardized MRD techniques.”
Bruno Paiva, Jacques J. M. van Dongen and Alberto OrfaoNew criteria for response assessment: role of minimal residual disease in multiple myeloma Blood 2015 125:3059-3068;
Jean-Luc Harousseau and Herve Avet-Loiseau, Minimal Residual Disease Negativity Is a New End Point of Myeloma Therapy. Journal of Clinical Oncology 35, no. 25 (September 2017) 2863-2865.