Minimal Residual Disease Detection by Flow Cytometry in Multiple Myeloma; Why and How?

The outlook for myeloma patients has steadily improved with the introduction of newer drug combinations in recent years. Unlike older therapies that largely achieved only modest levels of neoplastic clone reduction, the newer drug combinations have led to deeper suppression of myeloma clones in most patients. Frequently the neoplastic clones become undetectable with traditional disease evaluation approaches. Recent studies using ultrasensitive disease monitoring have demonstrated that patients with disease undetectable by traditional techniques show wide heterogeneity in disease levels varying by several orders of magnitude.

Source: Seminars in Hematology - March 9, 2018 Category: Hematology Authors: Mikhail Roshal Source Type: research