WINNIPEG -- It’s a potential medical breakthrough: New research is providing hope for early risk-detection of a cancer with no present cure.

“Smoldering multiple myeloma” (SMM) is a blood and bone marrow disorder which can lead to multiple myeloma, a deadly cancer. Detecting the condition can be a challenge, because those living with SMM show no symptoms until the disease progresses.

“It’s been a clinical challenge for years, for decades, actually,” said Dr. Sabine Mai, University of Manitoba Canada Research Chair in genomic instability and nuclear architecture in cancer.

Multiple myeloma is an incurable cancer. An estimated 4,000 Canadians are diagnosed each year, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, with an average survival of eight years after diagnosis.

But Mai and her team have found a method to predict the risk of patients developing multiple myeloma. She published her co-authored findings in the American Journal of Hematology.

Mai uses three-dimensional imaging to visualize genetic material inside a cell and determine whether there are any changes. The technology can indicate whether the cell is stable or cancerous well before symptoms show, according to the study.

“When you are able to risk-certify before the myeloma is a full-blown disease,” she said, “[you can] treat the patients at that stage. You can buy overall survivor time.”

‘It’s going to help people’

Lorelei Dalrymple has been living with myeloma for the last 15 years.

“I’ve had some ups and downs,” she says. “I’ve had a couple of relapses, but I am in stable disease control right now.”

She says the research Mai and her team have discovered is a game changer.

“It’s going to help people identify right away what kind of treatment plan should you be on, [and] what kind of conversations should you be having with your health care team.”

“For someone like me, who doesn’t have the normal markers in your blood or bone marrow, it’s going to show right in my DNA. They are going to be able to monitor this disease through a blood test instead of these really expensive PET scans,” she said.

The new research also shows potential in early detection of other forms of cancer, marking a step closer to cures for these deadly diseases.

“When you can detect it early, you have the chance to interfere with treatments, to delay progression,” said Mai.

“We are doing the best we can to find new diagnostic tools that will enable better treatments, and I think the cure will come.”