Gene expression profiling of mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow of multiple myeloma patients and normal donors

A growing body of evidence points to the essential role of bone marrow (BM) tumor microenvironment in Multiple Myeloma (MM) maintenance and progression. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are one of the most important players in this scenario. Through direct and indirect interactions, these cells support MM cells by promoting increase of proliferation, migration, survival, and drug resistance. Additionally, an increasing number of evidence has been demonstrating that MSC from MM patients (MM-MSC) have several abnormalities when compared with their normal counterpart from normal donors (ND-MSC). Therefore, the aimed of our study was to explore the differences between MM-MSC and ND-MSC through gene expression analysis. MSC were isolated from 4 untreated multiple myeloma patients and 4 normal donors (not matched by age nor gender). The experiments were done in technical triplicates. Total RNA from MSC was isolated and hybridyzed on Affymetrix GeneChip® Human Exon 1.0 ST Array. Amplification, hybridization and scanning were done according to standard Affymetrix protocols (www.affymetrix.com). CEL files were normalized with RMA method.