Prognostic value of prohibitin levels in transplant-eligible myeloma patients

The discovery of new molecules and cancer pathophysiology mechanisms is a research cornerstone for the open era of targeted immunotherapy development. Multiple myeloma is one of the more easily cured hematological malignancies in the era of targeted therapy, but there is a gap of resistant or relapsed patients, and new pathways of cellular division and proliferation could be possible with targeted therapy. Prohibitin is one of those proteins that has been studied in different kinds of malignancies and found to be overexpressed in malignancies; it has been studied in myeloma, and clinical trials are going on for targeted therapy.

Methods
Prohibitin expression was measured in peripheral blood samples from 50 myeloma patients before and after autologous bone marrow transplantation using ELISA kits. Its association with different prognostic and clinicopathological parameters was also evaluated.


Results

The median percentage of Prohibitin level in myeloma patients before autologous HSCT was significantly higher than after, and it was significantly associated with poor overall survival. Besides, overexpression of Prohibitin was significantly higher in patients with partial remission than in complete remission (
P
<0.001).



Conclusion
This study identifies Prohibitin as a poor prognostic marker in patients with myeloma and highlights the myeloablative effect of HSCT due to a low undesirable Prohibitin level.