2 days Ago
Multiple myeloma is one of the most common forms of cancer of the immune cells in the bone marrow. It is considered incurable. Even when patients respond to treatment at first, the cancer comes back.
To be able to intervene faster and on a more targeted basis, researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), and the Max Delbrück Center teamed up with other partners for a comprehensive study of this disease at the molecular level. The team now describes how highly aggressive types of tumors can be detected early on in an article published in the journal Nature Cancer . They show how changes in genetic material affect the protein profile of the tumor cells, and thus the mechanisms involved in the disease.
Multiple myeloma is a form of cancer in which the immune cells in the bone marrow, known as plasma cells, mutate and become cancerous. Plasma cells are responsible for producing antibodies. All humans have many different kinds of plasma cells that form large numbers of different antibodies.
This allows the body to recognize and fight various pathogens. In multiple myeloma, a single plasma cell mutates into a tumor cell. That cell reproduces unchecked, forming a monoclonal cell population.
This means many cells are formed, all of them exactly the same and genetically identical at first. The mutated cells often also produce large volumes of antibodies or fragments of them – but they do not function properly. Over t.
