Cell-free DNA from blood or bone marrow as alternatives to bone marrow cells for molecular diagnostics and monitoring of multiple myeloma

Molecular profiling of bone marrow tumor cells in multiple myeloma can be limited by low tumor cell content for analysis by multiple assays. Researchers evaluated the concordance of molecular profiles of cancer cells enriched from bone marrow versus cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from peripheral blood and bone marrow plasma collected at diagnosis. Use of cfDNA may be able to enable the prioritization of scarce cancer cells for single-cell RNA-sequencing or other applications that require intact cells.