Dutch Society of Clinical Chemistry Science & Innovation Award for the team of Hans Jacobs

During the lustrum congress of the  Dutch Society of Clinical Chemistry, the ErasmusMC/Radboudumc team led by medical immunologist dr. Hans Jacobs (theme Cancer development and immune defence) was awarded the Science & Innovation Award. His team pioneers on the development of personalized diagnostics to measure minimal residual disease in patients with multiple myeloma.

Sensitive blood-test as patient-friendly alternative for bone marrow-based cancer monitoring

Funded by KWF an international team of researchers, led by the Radboudumc and the Erasmus MC, have developed a novel technique for the ultra-sensitive assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) in blood of patients with multiple myeloma using mass spectrometry. In a series of publications they have shown that the test can be applied to all myeloma patients and that that their blood-based method performs equally well compared to MRD-evaluation on bone marrow.

The jury praised the innovative proteogenomic methods that were used as a solution to an urgent unmet clinical need. In collaboration with clinicians, patient-organizations and industry, the researchers develop personalized blood-diagnostics as a patient-friendly alternative to monitor MRD in myeloma patients.

“This Science & Innovation Award is a great appreciation of our team effort in the past 5 years” says dr. Jacobs.  “We have created personalized diagnostics that can make a significant health impact for cancer patients. We still have a long way to go before patients will benefit from our work. This award further inspires our team in our endeavor towards actual implementation of our methodology in clinical practice”.

Read a selection of the key publications of the MS-MRD blood test here.

Read more about the Dutch Society of Clinical Chemistry  and the Dutch Cancer Society.

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