Myeloma Crowd Radio/MCRI: Dr. Frank Zhan, MD, PhD, U of Iowa

Myeloma is not a single disease. Two types of high-risk myeloma have swapped chromosomes (14;16) and (14;20) have notoriously short survival times with conventional treatments and are found to be resistant to bortezomib, one of the standard myeloma therapies. Dr. Frank Zhan, MD, PhD of the University of Iowa searched a genetic database to identify 100 genes uniquely deregulated for these two types of myeloma. Based on database matching to find compounds that induce or reverse desired gene changes, he found 5 targets to affect the c-MAF and MAFB genes that are disregulated by these translocations. They found that only Alsterpaullon (ALP) significantly inhibits MM cell growth with “spike” expression of either c-MAF or MAFB. ALP is a cyclindependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor and blocks cell-cycle progression. However, the reasons for its antiproliferative effects is unknown. The research will test whether ALP is able to disable c-MAF/MAFB signaling events, thus rendering MM responsive to chemotherapeutics. Join us for this 6th show of the Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative with Dr. Frank Zhan, MD, PhD and Dr. Guido Tricot, MD, PhD to discuss a potential solution for these patients in a truly personalized medicine fashion.