MRD Testing in Multiple Myeloma: From a Surrogate Marker of Clinical Outcomes to an Every-Day Clinical Tool

Minimal residual disease (MRD) testing in multiple myeloma is here to stay. Studies show that MRD negativity is consistently associated with longer progression-free survival (PFS). It is just a matter of time until MRD negativity will become a regulatory endpoint for drug approval. Until that can happen, more analysis will be required to define the exact details of MRD in the regulatory setting. For example, for randomized studies there is need to define the amount of improvement in MRD negativity between the experimental arm and the control arm at a given time-point for a drug to obtain regulatory accelerated approval. Such efforts are underway. For the multiple myeloma field as a whole, important tasks for the (near) coming future are as follows: (1) to conduct or finalize the expanded analysis to define the exact details of MRD in the regulatory setting, (2) to develop new and better MRD assays-both more sensitive MRD assays for bone marrow aspirates and nonbone marrow aspirate-based assays (eg, blood-based and imaging-based MRD assays), and (3) to design novel clinical studies to formally assess the effect of MRD negativity in clinical decision making. The aim with this issue of the Journal is to provide a deep and comprehensive summary of the latest MRD knowledge in the field, and to outline future directions.