Understanding the molecules that help myeloma cells to grow and survive

Myeloma is the second most common blood cancer that affects white blood cells called plasma cells. Plasma cells are made inside our bone marrow (the spongy material inside some of our bones) and are needed to make antibodies. Antibodies are molecules that circulate in our blood, that find and kill bacteria and viruses that cause infections. Although new treatments have improved the survival of myeloma, the disease still has no cure.

Professor Karadimitris and his team have identified molecules that are thought to allow myeloma cancer cells to grow in numbers and survive. They plan to conduct some experiments in the lab to understand more about how these molecules work together to do this. They are going to look at the structure of these molecules to look at how they fit together and interact with other molecules in the cell with the aim of finding ways to disrupt this process.

At the end of the project, the team hope to have a better understanding of how molecules inside cancer cells interact to cause myeloma cells to grow in numbers and survive. They hope that this research will give them the knowledge to design and develop a new and better treatment for people with myeloma, getting us a step closer to a day where no lives are lost to this disease.