If this technique is successful it will be brought to clinical trials to eliminate minimal residual disease. In addition, investigators at the Dana Farber are developing a means of generating an immune response against HHV-8. Investigators at the University of Minnesota are comparing results using umbilical cord blood cells with peripheral blood and bone marrow as sources of stem cells for transplantation. Sensitive molecular and genetic marking studies are being used to define whether relapse is the result of contamination in the delivered stem cells or residual disease in the patient. Patients who fail an allogeneic transplant have an extremely poor outlook.
Further research is directed at identifying the specific cells responsible for the anti-MM effect.
This Registry provides important information which is used to develop future clinical studies and to generate hypothesis for laboratory research. Funds are currently being provided to support research to evaluate new drugs as well as to investigate the mechanisms by which the MM cells become resistant to our therapies. The hope is to be able to develop approaches to overcome this drug resistance. New agents which are not cytotoxic, but which induce the differentiation of myeloma cells are also being evaluated. Preclinical data suggest that such drugs may induce programmed cell death, or apoptosis, of myeloma cells by modulating the bcl-2 oncogene.