
Shaji Kumar, MD
Mayo Clinic, Rochester
"A novel drug that can stimulate a protein that normally induces cell death in damaged and cancerous cells"
Multiple Myeloma results in 12,000 deaths each year and remains incurable. Understanding disease biology and developing treatments targeted towards specific abnormalities remains the need of the hour. Programmed cell death is a mechanism by which abnormal cells are removed. This is not fully functional in myeloma, and allows cancer cells to survive indefinitely and resist treatments. Here we aim to study a novel drug that can stimulate a protein that normally induces cell death in damaged and cancerous cells. We believe that such treatments can also make the cancer cells more susceptible to currently available treatments.