Standard methods for disease response assessment in patients with lymphoma, including positron emission tomography and computed tomography scans, are imperfect. In other hematologic malignancies, particularly leukemias, the ability to detect minimal residual disease (MRD) is increasingly influencing treatment paradigms. However, in many subtypes of lymphoma, the application of MRD assessment techniques, like flow cytometry or polymerase chain reaction-based methods, has been challenging because of the absence of readily detected circulating disease or canonic chromosomal translocations. Newer MRD detection methods that use next-generation sequencing have yielded promising results in a number of lymphoma subtypes, fueling the hope that MRD detection may soon be applicable in clinical practice for most patients with lymphoma. MRD assessment can provide real-time information about tumor burden and response to therapy, noninvasive genomic profiling, and monitoring of clonal dynamics, allowing for many possible applications that could significantly affect the care of patients with lymphoma. Further validation of MRD assessment methods, including the incorporation of MRD assessment into clinical trials in patients with lymphoma, will be critical to determine how best to deploy MRD testing in routine practice and whether MRD assessment can ultimately bring us closer to the goal of personalized lymphoma care. In this review article, we describe the methods available for detecting MRD in patients with lymphoma and their relative advantages and disadvantages. We discuss preliminary results supporting the potential applications for MRD testing in the care of patients with lymphoma and strategies for including MRD assessment in lymphoma clinical trials.

中文翻译：

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淋巴瘤中的最小残留疾病评估：方法和应用

淋巴瘤患者疾病反应评估的标准方法，包括正电子发射断层扫描和计算机断层扫描，尚不完善。在其他血液系统恶性肿瘤中，尤其是白血病，检测微小残留疾病 (MRD) 的能力越来越多地影响治疗范式。然而，在淋巴瘤的许多亚型中，MRD 评估技术（如流式细胞术或基于聚合酶链反应的方法）的应用一直具有挑战性，因为缺乏易于检测的循环疾病或经典染色体易位。使用新一代测序的新型 MRD 检测方法在许多淋巴瘤亚型中取得了有希望的结果，这让 MRD 检测很快适用于大多数淋巴瘤患者的临床实践充满希望。MRD 评估可以提供有关肿瘤负荷和治疗反应、无创基因组分析和克隆动态监测的实时信息，允许许多可能的应用，这些应用可能会显着影响淋巴瘤患者的护理。进一步验证 MRD 评估方法，包括将 MRD 评估纳入淋巴瘤患者的临床试验，对于确定如何在常规实践中最好地部署 MRD 检测以及 MRD 评估是否最终能让我们更接近个性化淋巴瘤的目标至关重要关心。在这篇综述文章中，我们描述了可用于检测淋巴瘤患者 MRD 的方法及其相对优点和缺点。