Minimal Residual Disease: Application in Blood Cancers

A diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) can mean a long road with many twists and turns as patients try to achieve long-term remission from this chronic, complex and progressive form of blood cancer. Living with CLL has meant co-existing with a disease often marked by a cycle of remissions and relapses, and becoming more challenging to treat with each relapse.[i] Until recently, physicians had only a limited treatment arsenal and imprecise tests to measure evidence of disease, and the idea of measuring cancer cells to the point that they become “undetectable” was a far-fetched dream.[ii]
But as blood cancer treatment approaches evolved, the treatment paradigm expanded from chemo-immunotherapy based regimens to an array of targeted and chemo-free options. “In parallel with these important therapeutic advances, we also are getting closer to finding protocols that may one day help doctors to tell patients they can stop treatment and have a chance to live longer without their disease progressing,” says John Hayslip, medical director, AbbVie. “A decade ago, it was hard to imagine this as a possibility.”