This article has been updated with the correct name of the MRD Monitoring Test.
NEW YORK – Myriad Genetics on Monday said it is starting a new collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center to develop Myriad's minimal residual disease (MRD) testing platform as a tool to guide treatment, surveillance, and radiotherapy response in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
The MRD Monitoring Test is currently available to Myriad's academic and pharmaceutical industry partners for research use. It can be used to monitor circulating tumor DNA levels during treatment or for surveillance after a diagnosis.
Myriad's MRD platform is based on whole-genome sequencing, compared to other currently available MRD tests which monitor 50 or fewer variants in the tumor. "We suspect our MRD assay will be more sensitive because it tracks up to thousands of variants identified by sequencing the tumor's whole genome," Myriad CSO Dale Muzzey said in a statement.
Myriad researchers will work with MD Anderson radiation oncologist Chad Tang and medical oncologist Pavlos Msaouel.
Myriad has previously said it plans to soft-launch Precise MRD for research use in the second half of 2023, and anticipates launching the test commercially as a lab-developed test in 2025. Also in 2023, Myriad aims to begin a clinical validation study with Intermountain Healthcare.