Why is MRD testing important for patients to get done?

Why is MRD testing important for someone with AML?

So why is MRD testing important? It's very important for a few different reasons. It does give some idea of prognosis, which many patients would want to know. In other words, what is their risk of relapse? But I think more importantly now we can use MRD testing and the MRD result to help us decide somewhat in terms of the appropriate therapy for a given patient.

So, for example, there are some situations where if a patient becomes MRD negative with the current treatment that they're receiving, that we might not recommend something like a stem cell transplant because we felt that they've had a very good response to their chemotherapy regimen. In contrast, there may be patients who are MRD positive, meaning we can still detect residual disease after their initial therapy. And those patients we may recommend to do something like a stem cell transplant.

Also of note, there are actually clinical trials now for patients who are in remission, but still with evidence of MRD. And so testing for MRD will allow those patients to be screened for those potential clinical trials.