No Significant Expression of Wt1 Gene in Multiple Myeloma Patients at Diagnosis: Is Wt1 Gene Expression Useful Marker for Minimal Residual Disease in Multiple Myeloma?.

Monitoring of multiple myeloma patients during and after treatment for the presence of remaining myeloma cells (minimal residual disease, MRD) has been shown to give major insight into the effectiveness of treatment. However, so far applicabile genetic markers amenable to sensitive detection by PCR for MRD in myeloma patients. Previouse studies showed that Wilms tumor gene (WT1) expression level, measured by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), was useful as an indicator of minimal residual disease in leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome. In this study was to measure, by real-time polymerase chain reaction, levels of WT1 expression, in order to find a possible association between this gene and the minimall residual disease. We investigated peripheral blood WT1 expression level in 41 newly diagnosed multiple myeloma cases using quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. All patients carried normal WT1-mRNA levels. WT1 expression analyse may be not useful genetic marker for monitoring MRD in routine clinical use of multiple myeloma patients.