More accurate detection of a specific molecular marker in leukemic cells will help assess measurable residual disease and guide treatment decisions, improving patient outcomes, report investigators in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics
Grant A. Challen, PhD, Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, lead investigator, has been published in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
A novel assay that detects a unique molecular marker in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) may revolutionize the way this disease is detected and treated according to a new report in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics published by Elsevier. This assay may improve detection of AML driven by KMT2A gene fusions and may affect treatment decision-making, assessing response to therapy, and long-term surveillance.
AML is a rare, aggressive blood cancer diagnosed in around 120,000 individuals worldwide each year. Detecting residual disease during treatment is essential for determining prognosis and guiding treatment decisions. Currently, the methods for detecting measurable residual disease (MRD) during treatment for AML include bone marrow morphology, multiparameter flow cytometry (MPFC), and DNA sequencing. Morphologic assessment only detects leukemic cells at a 5% limit of detection. MPFC has a more sensitive limit of detection at 0.01% to 0.001%, but is challenging to implement and interpret, and is not standardized between laboratories. DNA sequencing approaches can identify leukemic cells by their somatic mutation profile but are expensive and can be confounded by clonal hematopoiesis in non-leukemic blood cells.
“This is a robust new tool for sensitive KMT2A fusion detection that is directly applicable for disease detection in patients with leukemia driven by these fusions. It fills a void for oncogenic fusion detection and provides some technical improvements. The assay is also scalable—additional fusions can be easily added to the assay—to expand coverage for other oncogenic fusions. We are improving blood cancer detection one drop at a time!”
Grant A. Challen, PhD