The value of liquid biopsy in diagnosis and monitoring of diffuse large b-cell lymphoma: recent developments and future potential

Introduction: Diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) represent a heterogeneous subset of non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) that demonstrate many molecular alterations and somatic mutations, all of which are targets for the recent development of biomarkers that use various molecular biological techniques. These non-invasive emerging biomarkers will be used in the next few years to better monitor the response to immunochemotherapeutic treatments with the aim of completely eradicating the disease in order to cure it.

Areas covered: In this review, the authors conducted a literature search to identify and summarize the major advances in liquid biopsy techniques for DLBCL that are useful for diagnosis and monitoring minimal residual disease (MRD). The authors report on the major technological leaps represented by the main MRD tools (sequencing of clone-specific rearrangements of immunoglobulin genes and sequencing of somatic mutations in circulating tumor plasma DNA) and present the expected future developments and the impact of these new tools on clinical practice.

Expert commentary: The monitoring of somatic mutations in tumor plasma cell-free DNA represents a promising tool for liquid biopsy, which will in the future allow non-invasive monitoring that will be used at any time to follow the response to the treatment.