Hello.
My name's Angela Dispenzieri.
I'm from the Mayo Clinic.
So today I'm going to talk to you about a technique called mass spectrometry of the blood. You may have heard of it.
There's been work going on for almost a decade now.
Understanding another way to follow myeloma proteins in patients.
This technique, it replaces the test called immunofixation,
which is maybe the test you an expression, you know,
if you're in complete response or you're aiming for complete response.
That's one of the tests that's very important to do to decide.
Is it a complete response or not?
So why do we need a different test?
Why if we have a test called immunofixation,
why would we want to do this mass spec test?
The reason is that, nowadays,
first of all, patients are getting deeper responses more often.
People are getting complete responses.
And we're using, drugs therapeutic monoclonal antibody.
So like daratumumab, isatuximab, elotuzumab, etc.
Some of the what you might have heard of is bispecific T-cell engager, those,
antibodies, those are man made antibodies you make your own with or myeloma.
You make an antibody which we call your myeloma protein.
But these antibodies actually when you run it by immunofix,
sometimes you can't tell if it's your protein or the drug.
And so it makes it harder for doctors to say, oh, you're in a remission
because they still see a funny protein there.
This technology can actually very easily distinguish your own myeloma protein
from the, the medicine protein that's been given to you.
So that is one advantage.
Another advantage is that it's actually
a lot more, what we call sensitive.
It can find lower levels.
And so there was a great excitement, you know, could this replace the bone
marrow, you know, to do MRD or minimal residual disease and all the rest.
The answer is probably we're not there year to get rid of the bone marrow biopsy,
but it does work better than the existing tests, the immunofixation.
And so perhaps it can save, you know, an unnecessary bone marrow biopsy
because it's clear evidence that there is disease
that the existing tests, the, you know, the free light chain
or that serum protein electrophoresis or the immunofix might not pick up.
So, hopefully it will help save some bone marrows.
Because nobody likes to have a bone marrow done if they can help it.
And so it helps us in the good direction knowing that things are going
really, really well.
And it also gives us some early signs that maybe things aren't going well,
that the disease may be acting up again, and that might affect how your provider
or your physician may want to deal with following you or treating you, etc.
There's also, a way that we've been doing now at Mayo, where we can get rid of
what's called the protein electrophoresis and actually measure.
So not just say, is the protein there, the myeloma protein there or not,
but we can actually just track how much protein.
And we can track it at much lower levels and quantify at the lower levels,
which is also a helpful tool.
So it's progress in terms of
trying to reduce not eliminate,
the use of bone marrow biopsies, because a blood test is way easier
than rolling over onto your side and getting a bone marrow biopsy.
HealthTree • December 17, 2024