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Blood, 1 January 2005, Vol. 105, No. 1, pp. 317-323. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on August 31, 2004; DOI 10.1182/blood-2004-03-0833.
Submitted March 4, 2004
Department of Hematology, Herlev Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark * Corresponding author; email: thra{at}herlevhosp.kbhamt.dk.
To assess a possible role in tumor progression, the occurrence and type of K- and N-RAS mutations were determined in purified tumor cells, including samples from patients with pre-malignant monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), multiple myeloma (MM), and extramedullary plasma cell (PC) tumors (ExPCT). Immunophenotypic aberrant PCs were flow-sorted from 20 MGUS, 58 MM and 13 ExPCT patients. One RAS mutation was identified in 20 MGUS tumors (5%), in contrast to a much higher prevalence of RAS mutations in all stages of MM (about 31%). Further, oncogene analyses showed that RAS mutations are not evenly distributed among different molecular subclasses of MM, with the prevalence being increased in MM expressing cyclin D1 (p = 0.015), and decreased in MM with t(4;14) (p = 0.055). We conclude that RAS mutations often provide a genetic marker if not a causal event in the evolution of MGUS to MM. Surprisingly, RAS mutations were absent in bone marrow tumor cells from all patients with ExPCT, a result significantly different from intramedullary MM (p = 0.001). From 3/6 patients with paired intra- and extramedullary PCs and identical IgH sequences, RAS mutations were identified only in extramedullary PCs, suggesting a role for RAS mutations in the transition from intramedullary to extramedullary tumor.
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