Minimal residual disease

Every child will have some leukaemia cells remaining in their bone marrow when they achieve remission. This is known as minimal residual disease - or MRD.

Doctors and scientists have discovered that a child’s MRD level is a reliable predictor of their risk of relapse.

However, because the number of cells can be extremely small – less than one leukaemia cell in 10,000 normal cells – it is not possible to detect MRD under the microscope.

Many years of research have culminated in the development of a new molecular technique for measuring MRD and the use of this technique is currently undergoing clinical trial at centres around the UK.

The great importance of this new technique is that it should enable doctors to identify which children face a higher risk of relapse and which children have only a low risk of relapse, enabling each child’s treatment to be tailored accordingly.

MRD testing has been acclaimed as the most promising way forward in improving the prognosis and reducing harm in children with leukaemia and we have been funding this work, now being led by Dr Nicholas Goulden at Great Ormond Street Hospital, since 2002.

Continuing this work is crucial as it will allow doctors to tailor each child’s treatment to maximise their chance of cure whilst minimising their risk of treatment related side-effects.

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Read more... about Dr Goulden’s minimal residual research trial