JAN. 31, 2003 | A scientist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has reported a gene profiling technique that may eventually enable cancer doctors to prescribe “personalized” treatments for individual patients with the rare and deadly disease multiple myeloma.

John Shaughnessy, Jr., Ph.D., of the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy at UAMS reports his latest discovery in the new issue of the prestigious journal Blood. The issue will be released Feb. 1.

Dr. Shaughnessy and his colleagues at UAMS use microarray technology to determine which of the estimated 12,000 human genes are “turned on” or “turned off” in multiple myeloma cells. In the new issue of Blood, he reports clear proof that myelomas can be segregated into different groups according to gene profiles. The new classification system is based on similarities of myeloma to different stages of normal plasma cell development. Importantly, the new system shows strong correlations with a similar, but distinct classification system reported in the same journal a year ago showing links between gene expression subgroups and historically important clinical parameters used in prognosis.

“This bodes well for the use of gene profiling to predict response and survival to different treatment regimens,” Dr. Shaughnessy said. He is director of the Donna D. and Donald M. Lambert Laboratory of Myeloma Genetics at the myeloma institute and a member of the Arkansas Cancer Research Center at UAMS.

The UAMS team’s goal is to use the gene “profiles” to classify cases of multiple myeloma according to how patients respond to different treatments. By classifying individual patients according to their gene profiles, physicians will be able to practice so-called “personalized medicine,” choosing to use experimental treatments for patients whose profiles suggest that they will not live long on conventional therapy, according to Dr. Shaughnessy.

The variability in myeloma survival “is vast, with some patients succumbing within months while others can live for a decade,” he says. Currently only 20 percent of this variability can be explained.

Although the median survival rate for myeloma patients in the United States is roughly 2.5 to three years, researchers at UAMS have achieved a median survival rate of six to seven years, attracting so many patients that UAMS has become one of the largest myeloma treatment and research centers in the world.

A type of cancer that affects plasma cells, multiple myeloma typically affects middle-aged or elderly persons. Approximately 15,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. There is no known cure for the disease, although lengthy remissions can often be achieved. The immediate goal in treating multiple myeloma is to get the disease under control and to keep the patient in remission with a good quality of life for as long as possible. Disease control can be complicated by a tendency for myeloma cells to become resistant to chemotherapeutic agents. By comparing the "profiles" of cells at diagnosis and at relapse, Dr. Shaughnessy is also attempting to identify molecular mechanisms of drug resistance.

UAMS is Arkansas’s leading institution for health-related research, with established groups of scientists in most major fields of interest to the National Institutes of Health. Several research groups at UAMS, in addition to scientists in the Lambert Laboratory, are conducting studies in genomics, the discipline that identifies genes, their interactions, and their effects on biological processes, such as the progress of different cancers.

Links on This Page

Myeloma Institute: http://myeloma.uams.edu/

UAMS Myeloma Researcher:  http://www.uams.edu/today/2003/012303/myeloma_research_wins_grant.htm

New Gift:   http://www.uams.edu/today/2002/121802/newgift.htm

Pharmaceutical Firm: http://www.uams.edu/today/2002/120602/barlogiecelgene.htm

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