meyloma

Lycorine is a natural anti-tumor alkaloid extracted from Amaryllidaceae and has various biological effects on malignant cells. The present study explores the effects of lycorine on the human multiple meyloma cell line, KM3, and the possible mechanisms of these effects. An MTT assay showed that lycorine had significant inhibitory activity on KM3 cells. The growth rates of the KM3 cells exposed to lycorine evidently slowed down. Cell fluorescent apoptotic morphological changes, DNA degradation fragments, and a sub-G1 peak were detected, indicating the occurrence of cell apoptosis after lycorine treatment...

Serum free light chain assay is a recently available test for diagnosis and monitoring of patients with plasma cell dyscrasias. In particular, this test is especially useful in patients that were previously difficult to follow with traditional laboratory methods. These patients include non-secretory multiple myeloma, amyloidosis and light chain deposition disease. In addition other uses for the test include monitoring response to treatment and earlier detection of relapse in all patients with plasma cell dyscrasias...

Since the introduction of melphalan-prednisone for the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM) three decades ago, the prognosis of patients has not been improved by the addition of other agents, probably due to marked resistance of tumor cells, even at diagnosis, to commonly employed cytotoxic drugs. The biological basis for drug resistance is reviewed and current methods of diagnosis and staging delineated. The overview on treatment focuses on recurrent advances with myeloablative therapy demonstrating, in randomized and historically controlled trials, that high-dose therapy increases the incidence of true complete remission (CR) from 5% to approximately 40%, with an extension of median event-free (EFS) and overall (OS) survival durations to 3...

In the past 10 years, a number of uncontrolled studies have shown that autologous transplantation is a useful salvage therapy for refractory and relapsed multiple meyloma (MM) and a safe and effective consolidation for patients responding to initial conventional chemotherapy. However, because of selection bias in all these studies, the exact role of autologous transplant in the management of newly diagnosed patients was not known. In 1990, the Intergroupe Français du Myelome (IFM) initiated a randomized study comparing conventional chemotherapy and high-dose therapy (HDT) followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation...

Two H-2-linked autosomal dominant immune response (Ir) genes Ir-IgG and Ir-IgA were demonstrated to be at separate loci. Ir-IgG controls the immune response to IgG (gamma2a) myeloma proteins and Ir-IgA the immune response to IgA meyloma proteins. Both genes are associated with the H-2K region specificities of the H-2 chromosome, specifically Ir-IgG with H-2(b) and Ir-IgA with H-2(a). Different recombinants derived from H-2(a)/H-2(b) crossovers were examined for their immune responsiveness to BALB/c IgG (gamma2a) and IgA myeloma proteins...

The proteins on surfaces of living splenic lymphocytes from normal BALB/c mice were iodinated enzymatically. Such cells were fractionated into two sub-populations: one composed almost exclusively of small lymphocytes and the other mainly of large lymphocytes and plasma cells. Specific immunoprecipitation of radiolabeled surface Ig obtained from lysates of these cell populations indicated that approximately 2-3% of the acid-precipitable radioactivity from the cell surface is Ig. Moreover, 95% of the H chain radioactivity from the Ig of the small lymphocyte fraction and 90% from the large lymphocyte-plasma cell fraction was characterized as micro by precipitation with anti-micro sera as well as by molecular weight determination on polyacrylamide gels in sodium dodecyl sulfate...

The observation that reduction of the inter-chain disulfides in rabbit antibody destroys its ability to interact with complement was confirmed and shown to be true also of human meyloma IgG1 subclass proteins. In the latter case a C1-binding assay was used. Further studies indicated that it was the interheavy chain disulfides which were essential for complement-binding activity: Non-covalently reassembled IgG (LHHL) was devoid of C1-fixing activity whereas molecules formed from covalently linked heavy chain dimers, and reduced and alkylated light chains (ie...

The first case of multiple meyloma presenting clinically with extraskeletal prostatic involvement simulating a primary prostatic neoplasm is reported. The clinical course, pathology, and serum and urine protein findings are discussed.

We have developed radioimmunoassays that detect idiotypic (variable region) differences among the alpha(1 leads to 3) dextran-binding meyloma proteins U102, J558, and M104 as well as an assay that detects variable region determinants common to all three proteins. Using these assays, we have examined 7S and 19S anti-alpha(1 leads to 3) dextran antibodies induced in five murine strains of the a1 IgCH linkage group and the recombinant strain BAB/14. All idiotypes were expressed in both 19S and 7S antibodies from all strains, but with considerable strain-specific variability in penetrance...