September is World Blood Cancer Awareness Month

Did you know that in our laboratory at the Department of Clinical Genetics in Erasmus MC, we have a validated test to detect unbalanced chromosome aberrations in patients with bone marrow malignancy such as MDS? More research is necessary, however it looks like a CNV analysis in cfDNA from blood plasma is sufficient to detect aberrations such as del5q or monosomy 7. Through cfDNA analysis you can discover them before the bone marrow is sampled. I truly hope it will save bone marrow sampling in some patients in the near future, but on the other hand it will also allow earlier diagnosis of bone marrow malignancies!