We are thrilled to share a recent Courier Mail story highlighting how MARS® technology is being used at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) to support multiple myeloma testing in Queensland, Australia.
The article describes how the Pathology Queensland team has introduced the MARS® Bar Flex into its genomics workflow to improve the enrichment of plasma cells before downstream genetic testing. According to Principal Chief Scientist Genomics Dr Adayapalam Nandini, the previous testing process relied on a highly manual, labor-intensive immunologic staining method. As testing demand increased, this contributed to a backlog, and in some cases patients could wait months for a result.
With the new enrichment workflow, the Queensland team reports a substantial improvement in performance. Dr Nandini told the Courier Mail that other platforms had achieved approximately 60% efficiency, while the new instrument is achieving 98–100% enrichment efficiency. She described the resulting enrichment fractions as “phenomenally better.”
This improvement is particularly important in multiple myeloma, where abnormal plasma cells may be present at relatively low levels and multiple genetic lesions can contribute to the disease. The team reported that improved enrichment is allowing them to detect lower levels of cancer cells and identify the genetic abnormalities associated with the disease more effectively.
Approximately 150 patient cases have already been processed using the new workflow. According to Dr Nandini, abnormalities are now being identified in substantially more patients than with the previous approach. Because genetic findings can help determine eligibility for particular targeted therapies, obtaining a more informative result may help clinicians make treatment decisions sooner.
The article also highlights an important benefit for patients outside major metropolitan centers. Dr Joel Wight, haematology staff specialist at Townsville University Hospital, described the technology as a “game changer for regional patients.” Samples transported over long distances had previously been at greater risk of producing unsuccessful or inadequate results, making robust enrichment especially important for regional testing pathways.
The Queensland team is now looking toward further expansion of genomic testing in multiple myeloma, with the goal of supporting more comprehensive genomic profiling as the workflow develops.
Supporting multiple myeloma research with MARS®
The MARS® platform was developed to automate immunomagnetic cell separation and help laboratories enrich rare target-cell populations from complex biological samples. For multiple myeloma applications, MARS® Bar Flex can be used for CD138+ plasma-cell enrichment from bone marrow, helping increase the proportion of target plasma cells available for downstream analyses such as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). When plasma cells are present at low frequency, effective enrichment can make an important difference to downstream analysis by reducing background cells and increasing representation of the population of interest. Applied Cells has evaluated MARS®-based CD138+ enrichment as a sample-preparation approach for multiple myeloma FISH workflows, including direct enrichment from bone marrow samples.
Learn more about MARS® CD138+ plasma-cell enrichment for FISH.
Read the original Courier Mail article, “Revolutionary machine offers Queensland blood cancer patients access to faster treatment”.
For Research Use Only. Not for use in therapeutic or diagnostic procedures.
