Predictive Medicine: Risk-adapted Therapy in Multiple Myeloma with combined abnormal Chromosomes 1 and 13 Confers Resistance to Thalidomide in Total Therapy 2 and is linked to Hyper-expression of the IL6R Gene in Malignant Plasma Cells

Applications: Thalidomide has been successfully used to successfully treat myeloma patients however, patients with high IL6R expression levels via gene expression profiling, do not benefit from the use of this drug. Therefore, the use of anti-IL6R therapies in combination with other drugs provides an improved risk adapted therapeutic approach in selected patients.

Researchers have disclosed novel method of identifying multiple myeloma patient populations that are likely to respond to treatments with thalidomide. Further, in multiple myeloma patients with certain cytogenetic abnormalities linked to the elevated expression of IL6R, novel therapeutic combinations of thalidomide with IL6 receptor antagonists provide favorable outcomes.

Thalidomide’s favorable survival effects were traced to cytogenetic abnormalities that could involve either chromosomes 1 or 13, but not both. The adverse consequences of coexisting abnormalities of chromosomes 1 and 13 lead to or are correlated with increased levels of IL6R. This has emerged as a novel independent adverse parameter for overall survival, along with TP53 deletion in the low-risk subgroup of multiple myeloma patients. This variability in patients predicts that thalidomide therapy was prognostically favorable in the presence of cytogenetic abnormalities in combination with IL6R specific agents.

This discovery is an improvement on current risk predictors and is a first in predictive medicine, i.e. using genetic features of the disease at diagnosis to predict drug use. The importance of this discovery is also based on the high cost of thalidomide therapy, which also has serious side-effects.

Ongoing research involves further validation and improvements of these personalized predictive treatments

Patent Pending

Available for Exclusive Licensing

09-29 SHAUGHNESSY

No known limitations

File Number: 09-29 

Web site: http://www.uams.edu/bioventures

Disease: Cancer

Other Information:

PI = John Shaughnessy, Ph.D.