How Minimal Residual Disease Assessment Emerged as an Important Tool for Blood Cancers

While early technologies could cost as much as three billion dollars for one individual’s entire DNA sequence, current methods only cost around one thousand dollars per patient. That’s a huge drop in cost, and it’s accompanied by a decrease in the amount of time required as well. On top of that, because these technologies are being simplified, clinicians are now being trained more frequently in how to use them. The increased use of next-generation sequencing to uncover minimal residual disease in a patient is a huge step to increased long-term health in lymphoma patients. If physicians can use this technology to discover small traces of cancer, then they will be able to provide earlier treatment and a patient’s prognosis is exponentially more likely to be positive.