4 August 2022 - - US-based testing laboratories company Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) has launched a next-generation sequencing -based assay for research in myeloid measurable residual disease, the company said.

As the first NGS-based tests to support both DNA and RNA input, the Ion Torrent Oncomine Myeloid MRD Assays provide a comprehensive and highly sensitive MRD assessment from blood and bone marrow samples.

Acute myeloid leukemia is characterized by rapid disease progression and can be fatal if not treated promptly.

Depending on their interventions, the number of AML patients who experience relapsed disease can be as high 78%.

Detecting remaining mutations after treatment can help identify the presence of residual disease and guide patient prognosis and further treatment decisions.

This is driving a growing need for an MRD detection methods that can simultaneously track mutations across multiple genes with high sensitivity.

Current MRD detection methods do not evaluate individual mutations or can only track a very limited number at once.

Thermo Fisher's Myeloid MRD Assay has been designed to enable simultaneous testing and identification of more than 90% of common AML mutations and fusions, providing insights to guide the future of clinical applications, standards and drug development.

The Myeloid MRD Assay enables sensitive variant detection as low as 0.05% allele frequency for key DNA mutations in 33 genes and evaluation of more than 900 isoforms in 43 RNA fusion driver genes including many targets for which there are no established assays to-date.

The end-to-end workflow delivers results in as little as two days with an integrated informatics pipeline and reporting tool that can help to minimize user hands-on time and speed up time to results.