James Blachly, MD, assistant professor of Internal Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the role of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as a biomarker for patients with hairy cell leukemia.
Blachly says ctDNA is an important emerging biomarker in many different cancer types, as well as non-cancer applications. However, this has not been tested previously in hairy cell leukemia. This disease behaves like any other non-Hodgkin lymphoma and sheds a moderate amount of cell free DNA that is readily detectable.
This is good because it’s distinguished by a monomorphic genetic driver, Blachly says. This is the BRAF mutation, which is a simple and easy target to look for in patients, whereas other cancers and lymphomas have a variety of mutations. In hairy cell leukemia, there is 1 target to go after which makes the process simple, Blachly concludes.