May 23, 2022
Keio University
Tokyo Medical University
A research group, including Professor Yutaka Hattori of the Department of Clinical Physiology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Keio University (President: Kohei Itoh / Minato-ku, Tokyo); Professor Takahiro Ochiya and Project Assistant Professor Satoshi Yamashita of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine, Tokyo Medical University Institute of Medical Science (President: Yukiko Hayashi / Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo); Professor and Chairman Masahiko Kuroda of the Department of Molecular Pathology; and Yusuke Yamamoto of the Division of Cancer Informatics, National Cancer Center, has reported that extracellular vesicles (hereinafter EV) secreted from drug-resistant multiple myeloma cells are taken up by drug-sensitive cells, causing the drug-sensitive strains to newly acquire drug resistance.
Multiple myeloma is a type of hematopoietic tumor. Since the 2000s, a series of new therapeutic drugs have been approved, significantly improving patient prognosis. Lenalidomide, in particular, is a therapeutic drug used by many patients, but treatment resistance arising from long-term use of the drug has become a clinical problem. Previously known mechanisms of lenalidomide resistance included reports of decreased expression or genetic mutations of its direct target molecule, cereblon. This study has discovered a new drug resistance mechanism in which treatment resistance is transmitted from resistant cells to sensitive cells via EVs. It is expected that this will lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies for multiple myeloma that prevent treatment resistance by inhibiting EV secretion, as the development of EV secretion inhibitors for multiple myeloma cells progresses.
The results of this study were published in Blood Advances (2020 IF = 6.69), a sister journal to Blood , the journal of the American Society of Hematology.
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