The Multiple Myeloma Channel is supported with funding from AbbVie (Platinum), Sanofi (Gold), Legend Biotech (Bronze), and through an educational grant from Alexion Pharma GmbH.
VJHemOnc is an independent medical education platform. Supporters, including channel supporters, have no influence over the production of content. The levels of sponsorship listed are reflective of the amount of funding given to support the channel.
IMS 2026 | Blood-based technologies for diagnosis and monitoring in multiple myeloma
Jill Corre, PharmD, PhD, The Cancer University Institute of Toulouse Oncopole (IUCT), Toulouse, France, discusses the emerging role of blood-based technologies for diagnosis and monitoring in multiple myeloma. She highlights circulating tumor cells (CTCs), cell-free DNA and mass spectrometry as promising approaches that could complement bone marrow assessment, including for identifying functional high-risk disease and informing the need for repeat bone marrow testing. This interview took place at the 23rd International Myeloma Society (IMS) Annual Meeting in Glasgow, UK.
These works are owned by Magdalen Medical Publishing (MMP) and are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All rights are reserved.
Transcript
So we had this fantastic session yesterday about blood-based technology in myeloma. You know that myeloma is a bone marrow disease and we need some bone marrow sampling and we know very well that for following it, it is important to have a dynamic follow-up and repeating bone marrow sampling is not something that the patient wants, the doctor wants. And also we have some issues sometimes with bone marrow sampling, with hemodilution, with the fact that myeloma is a patchy disease, and sometimes bone marrow is not representative of all the body...
So we had this fantastic session yesterday about blood-based technology in myeloma. You know that myeloma is a bone marrow disease and we need some bone marrow sampling and we know very well that for following it, it is important to have a dynamic follow-up and repeating bone marrow sampling is not something that the patient wants, the doctor wants. And also we have some issues sometimes with bone marrow sampling, with hemodilution, with the fact that myeloma is a patchy disease, and sometimes bone marrow is not representative of all the body. You have also some cases with extramedullary disease. So blood-based technology has emerged lately, either by the indirect marker, which is the M protein, especially with mass spectrometry, either with the direct marker, which is the tumor cells or the DNA of the tumor cells, in particular with the CTC, with cfDNA. And a third actor in this blood test are the immune system, the immune markers, such as absolute lymphocyte count, which is very instructive before an immune therapy. And clearly, these blood tests were restricted to research labs for a couple of years and now we are going to see these tools for routine practice. I think that the most promising tools are CTC and diagnosis. Clearly, they have a great impact. We talk a lot about functional high risk in myeloma. The cases where we have an early relapse, where it wasn’t expected because the genomic factors were quite favorable and in that case sometimes the CTC are at a high level and it may be an explanation and the other one tool which is very promising for me is mass spectrometry in blood because it could sometimes inform if we have to perform a bone marrow test.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
Read more...
