Why do some patients respond to treatment when others become resistant to common myeloma therapies? Dr. Brian Van Ness, PhD of the University of Minnesota shares his work in the lab and with the Mayo Clinic to dive deeper into the genetics of myeloma to determine which type of myeloma cells are responding to standard therapies and which are not. He compares the Human Genome Project, which cost $2-3 billion and took 11 years to finalize, to the current capacity now available to do the same work for $1,000 in less than a week. But he also shares the challenge: how do you sort through all of the information to find what could be relevant and important? Dr. Van Ness and the University of Minnesota have partnered with the Mayo Clinic to unite his laboratory capacity and expertise in tumor cell genome sequencing and modeling with the clinical practice at the Mayo Clinic. Their goal for this first project is to identify which myeloma tumors become resistant to proteasome inhibitors and which do not, allowing myeloma doctors to identify when this standard class of drugs will be most effective. With that valuable information doctors could predict response, prescribe secondary drugs to overcome the resistance, or stage their use to increase their effectiveness.  Sorting through the mass of data will require teamwork from researchers, doctors and data analysts to make sense of the critical information that is now available. The day of myeloma genetics has arrived and is now headed to real-world clinical application. The Myeloma Crowd Radio Show with Dr. Brian Van Ness, PhD