Non-invasive liquid biopsy to predict risk of relapse in multiple myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) kills 1 in 200 Australians annually, as it is a progressive malignancy of bone-marrow plasma cells that is currently incurable. Researchers at the Laboratory of Cancer Cell Biology and Therapeutics, at the UTS Graduate School of Health, are developing a simple, non-invasive test — a ‘liquid biopsy’ — for the diagnosis and management of MM.

This liquid biopsy requires only a blood sample to monitor a patient’s unique cancer phenotype based on biomarker ‘signatures’, the precise configuration of which corresponds to resistance, disease progression and therapeutic response in individual patients. This test demonstrates potential to complement existing biochemical benchmarks used in diagnosis and staging. More importantly it enables clinicians to routinely monitor disease progression and provides a surrogate for invasive bone marrow biopsies.

As there is no other blood-borne resistance biomarker in the market, this test will uniquely address a significant part of the rapidly growing $21 billion global market for new cancer markers.

Benefits

Treatment of MM typically involves combination chemotherapy, but therapeutic response and patient survival are unpredictable and highly variable — attributed to the evolution of clonal multiple drug resistance (MDR) in response to chemotherapy. The sooner that cancer cells evolving MDR can be detected, the sooner alternative treatment options can be initiated to prevent tumour re-occurrence.

Currently, however, no procedures allow for direct, non-invasive, routine monitoring of the development of MDR in this cancer or any other. This is the unmet medical need that our test will address, enabling treatment that is personalised for each individual patient and optimised through their treatment journey.

The test can:

• predict the transition from inactive to active disease before conventional tests can
• routinely monitor disease progression in individual patients during treatment
• predict treatment unresponsiveness
• requires only a minimally invasive blood test that can be performed regularly, easily and cheaply.

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