Monitoring tumour burden and therapeutic response through analysis of circulating tumour DNA and extracellular RNA in multiple myeloma patients

Monitoring tumour burden and therapeutic response through analyses of circulating cell-free tumour DNA (ctDNA) and extracellular RNA (exRNA) in multiple myeloma (MM) patients were performed in a Phase Ib trial of 24 relapsed/refractory patients receiving oral azacitidine in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone. Mutational characterisation of paired BM and PL samples at study entry identified that patients with a higher number of mutations or a higher mutational fractional abundance in PL had significantly shorter overall survival (OS) ( p = 0.005 and p = 0.018, respectively). A decrease in ctDNA levels at day 5 of cycle 1 of treatment (C1D5) correlated with superior progression-free survival (PFS) ( p = 0.017). Evaluation of exRNA transcripts of candidate biomarkers indicated that high CRBN levels coupled with low levels of SPARC at baseline were associated with shorter OS ( p = 0.000003). IKZF1 fold-change <0.05 at C1D5 was associated with shorter PFS ( p = 0.0051) and OS ( p = 0.0001). Furthermore, patients with high baseline CRBN coupled with low fold-change at C1D5 were at the highest risk of progression ( p = 0.0001). In conclusion, this exploratory analysis has provided the first demonstration in MM of ctDNA for predicting disease outcome and of the utility of exRNA as a biomarker of therapeutic response.