Already we’ve been talking about MRD for several years, now it’s reality we have to actually incorporate it into the clinical trials. I think the biggest change that will happen when we start incorporating MRD, is whether we change therapy based on MRD. I think this is where certainly MRD will make a big difference.
Currently we change therapy if someone has a complete remission, or a stringent complete remission, now we would have a another depth of response for our patients and achieving that depth of response would be very important for us to decide should we go on maintenance for a very long time, or should we stop therapy...
Already we’ve been talking about MRD for several years, now it’s reality we have to actually incorporate it into the clinical trials. I think the biggest change that will happen when we start incorporating MRD, is whether we change therapy based on MRD. I think this is where certainly MRD will make a big difference.
Currently we change therapy if someone has a complete remission, or a stringent complete remission, now we would have a another depth of response for our patients and achieving that depth of response would be very important for us to decide should we go on maintenance for a very long time, or should we stop therapy. So, for the first time we’re actually saying: Can we stop therapy for multiple myeloma? Are we achieving a surrogate for a cure in those patients? And that’s that MRD test. Again, hopefully in the future we get better and better ways of assessing MRD, but that’s the first step for us.