The BOTTOM LINE: This blood test will be an ultrasensitive method that can be used for periodic assessment in the blood to precisely monitor disease status and make recommendations about ongoing care.
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This week's "Ask Dr. Durie" comes from a patient who has heard that there is a new sensitive test for measuring minimal residual disease (MRD) that can be used with a blood sample.
And so, the first answer to this question is that that is correct. There is a new blood test, and it is called BloodFlow—this is the name of this test.
This is a test that has been developed by a team at the University of Pamplona in Spain, and the team is led by Dr. Bruno Paiva. And he produced a very clever idea where he takes the blood sample and then he concentrates the number of myeloma cells using immunomagnetic beads. So, he passes the blood through a column with immunomagnetic beads, which captures and concentrates the myeloma cells.
And when you do this first, it allows you to have a much more sensitive test for measuring the number of myeloma cells in the blood. The bottom line here is that the sensitivity is remarkably good. One can detect the presence or absence of like zero or one out of 100 million cells.
So, if you look at 100 million cells, you can see there is no myeloma or one or two myeloma cells. And so, this level of sensitivity at ten-to-minus-eight is unheard of. And so, using a blood test—this MRD testing, I think, will make a major difference in the way that we assess the ability to look at the minimal residual disease.
And as a starting point, if patients have a negative result with this new, sensitive technique, do they do better than those that are positive? And obviously what turned out to be very impressive is that patients who have a negative result with this sensitive test have markedly prolonged remission versus those who have a positive result.
And so, it looks like moving forward, this will be an ultrasensitive method that can be used for periodic assessment in the blood to precisely monitor disease status and make recommendations about ongoing care, to change the treatment, to stop the treatment, to use new therapy. And so really a powerful, new sensitive technique that I think will be widely applied.
Professor of Medicine, Hematologist/Oncologist, and Honoree MD at the University of Brussels, Dr. Brian G.M. Durie is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Scientific Officer of the IMF. Dr. Durie is also the Chairman of the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG)—a consortium of more than 250 myeloma experts from around the world—and leads the IMF’s Black Swan Research Initiative® (BSRI).
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