[JimNY]

Article by Dr. Shain on new myeloma-related research

by JimNY on Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:47 pm

I just noticed that Beacon physician Dr. Shain has a new article in the journal Blood:

http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/119/24/5612.full

It's a comment on some new research related to how myeloma cells may spread through the body. I don't think the research is going to have any effect on the treatment of myeloma in the very near future, but it seems like it could affect what sort of treatments come out (and turn out to be effective) in the longer term.

I'm afraid it's a bit technical for me to summarize very well. Perhaps others here can give a good non-technical summary.

Congrats to Dr. Shain on the article.

[Nancy Shamanna]

Re: Article by Dr. Shain on new myeloma-related research

by Nancy Shamanna on Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:35 am

I think that part of what Dr. Shain is writing in his paper is that stem cells, or germ cells, leave the bone marrow and go to secondary lymphoid organs for maturation into normal plasma cells. Then they return to the BM environment. The multiple myeloma cells are also finding a way out of the marrow along with the stem cells, and then getting re-circulated through the normal system back into the BM, but perhaps at a different location than where they originated, thus spreading the disease. A cancerous, hypoxic (low in O2) environment in the marrow seems to speed their spread, which is also the case for solid tumours. hopefully Dr. Shain himself will provide us with the 'Readers Digest' version of his paper! It sounds like ground-breaking research!