Next Generation Sequencing For The Assessment Of Measurable Residual Disease

Measurable residual disease (MRD), also known as minimal residual disease, refers to residual clonal cells in blood or bone marrow following treatment for hematologic malignancies. MRD is typically assessed by flow cytometry (FC) or polymerase chain reaction, which can detect 1 clonal cell in 100,000 cells. It is proposed that next-generation sequencing (NGS), which can detect 1 residual clonal sequence out of 1,000,000 cells, will improve health outcomes in patients who have been treated for hematologic malignancies such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), multiple myeloma (MM), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).