Measurable disease evaluation in patients with myeloma.

Recent years saw significant breakthroughs in treatment of multiple myeloma. Durable remissions are now seen in a significant proportion of patients with the previously uniformly incurable and progressive disease. Yet because of deep suppression of the neoplastic myeloma clones by the newer therapies, older disease monitoring techniques are insufficient to distinguish between the patients at high risk of imminent relapse and those in whom durable remission is expected. This review briefly describes prognostic and therapeutic implications of measurable disease (MRD) evaluation, explains why deep MRD evaluation is needed for patients without morphologic evidence of disease, and reviews the state of the art of evaluation of myeloma MRD by flow cytometry.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The author has received consulting fees from Celgene for a project that was not in connection with myeloma therapy or monitoring.
(Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)