Gene Expression Profiling of Isolated Mesenchymal and Osteoblastic Cells Exhibits a Different Pattern of Expression in Multiple Myeloma Patients as Compared to Healthy Subjects: Potential Relationship with the Presence of Bone Lesions.

Gene expression alterations occurring in the bone microenvironment cells and their potential relationships with the occurrence of bone lesions in multiple myeloma (MM) patients have never been investigated. In this study, we have isolated both mesenchymal (MSC) and osteoblastic (OB) cells, without in vitro differentiation, from bone biopsies obtained by iliac crest of 24 MM patients, 7 MGUS subjects and 8 healthy donors (N) who underwent orthopedics surgery. Bone status was evaluated in all MM patients by total X rays scan and MRI for the spine. Firstly, we evaluated cell proliferation in relationship with growth substrate (bone and glass) and cell phenotype by flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry. We found that both MSC and OB cells have higher cell doubling rate in MM patients as compared to N. Higher expression of alkaline phosphatase and Runx2 was observed in OB as compared to MSC cells in both N and MM patients without osteolytic lesions, but not in osteolytic ones. We performed a gene expression profiling analysis of isolated MSC and OB cells using GeneChip® Affymetrix HG-U133A oligonucleotide arrays. An unsupervised analysis of the most variable genes across the dataset generated a hierarchical clustering with the two major branches containing respectively MSC and OB samples. A multiclass analysis of N, MGUS and MM patients identified 33 differentially expressed probe-set (specific for 27 genes) in MSC cells, and 19 differentially expressed probe-set (13 genes) in OB, and the identified transcripts mainly characterized N versus MM and MGUS samples. A supervised analysis between N and MM samples identified 65 probes (56 genes: 17 up-regulated and 39 down-regulated) differentially expressed in MSC and 35 probes (29 genes, 12 up-regulated and 17 down-regulated) in OB. Notably, genes encoding the Homeobox class proteins, such as HOXB2-6-7, were up-regulated in both MSC and OB of MM patients as compared to N. As regards the bone status, a total of 60 probe-sets (3 up-regulated and 57 down-regulated genes) were found differentially expressed in MSC from osteolytic vs. non-osteolytic MM patients, whereas MGUS-MSC exhibited an intermediate transcriptional profile between osteolytic and non-osteolytic MM patients. A distinct pattern of gene expression profiling was also observed in MSC versus OB when osteolytic and non-osteolytic MM patients were compared (26 vs. 94 differentially expressed probe-sets, respectively), including transcription factors related to MSC osteogenic differentiation belonging to Runx2 pathway (HEY1) or Wnt and BMP signaling On the other hand, few genes were found differentially expressed in OB cells in relationship with the presence of bone lesions. In conclusion, we identified a distinctive transcriptional fingerprint in isolated MSC and OB cells of MM patients as compared to N subjects, which mainly correlated with cell proliferation. Moreover, a different gene expression profile was observed in MSC cells of MM patients according to the presence/absence of bone lesions, highlighting the critical role of the block of the osteogenic differentiation.