Multiple myeloma is an incurable form of blood cancer, but after treatment, many patients show few or no signs of disease. Still, a small number of cancer cells often remain, known as minimal residual disease. Detecting these cells is important, since they can cause the disease to return. This is currently mostly done using a painful bone marrow biopsy. In this thesis, a blood test was further developed to detect residual disease by tracking the unique protein produced by the cancer cells. This blood test is a thousand times more sensitive than existing blood tests and can detect residual disease about as well as a bone marrow biopsy, but with much less burden for the patient. The test was made faster, cheaper, and easier to automate, so it can eventually be used for many more patients. This is an important step toward using the test in daily clinical care.
About the PhD candidate
Charissa Wijnands (1990) obtained her Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences in 2017, after which she worked as a medical technician at Amsterdam UMC and Erasmus MC. In 2021, she started her PhD research at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, in the Medical Immunology and Translational Metabolic Laboratories at Radboud university medical center. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the same departments.