Plasmacytomas are More Genomically Complex than Myeloma in the Bone Marrow | Urvi Shah, MD | #ASH24

Hi. I'm Urvi Shah, hematologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

On behalf of my coauthors, Doctor Kylee Maclachlan, who will be presenting at ash and also with the other study author is Doctor Francesco Maura, Doctor Saad Usmani, Doctor Niels Weinhold, and other coauthors. I'd like to discuss the, genomic complexity in plasma cytomas compared to bone marrow in myeloma patients. What we did is whole genome exosome or targeted sequencing of plasma cytomas so tumors outside the bone marrow with and as well as sequencing of bone marrow.

And we compared this. And what we see is that plasma cytomas have increased genomic complexity mutational burden and copy number aberrations, suggesting that that may be a bit more aggressive, the disease in the plasma cytoma compared to the bone marrow. And we are presenting those findings today at the Ash meeting I think what we understand from this is that the plasma cytomas have slightly distinct or increased complexity of genetic changes than what's in the bone marrow.

And sometimes when we're looking at risk stratification, we may just be looking at the bone marrow. But the disease is heterogeneous. And sometimes we may need to understand it from different aspects. As of now, we don't always biopsy every site of disease. But what we're learning is there's significant heterogeneity or variation in the genomic changes and different sites of disease.