Dr. Berenson on the Myeloma BioBank Launch

Blood Cancers Today spoke with James Berenson, MD, of the Berenson Cancer Center, about the launch of the Myeloma BioBank.
"We've been very interested in figuring out how to better predict outcomes in myeloma," Dr. Berenson said. "In order to do that, we have been collecting bone marrow and blood specimens from myeloma patients for the last two decades to better be able to determine their outcomes from levels of proteins, expression of genes, and those sorts of things in the bone marrow and blood."
According to Dr. Berenson, the Myeloma BioBank contains approximately 22,000 total samples from around 1200 patients with myeloma.
"Many of these samples were collected over years in individual patients," Dr. Berenson stated. "They are a very good resource because the clinical data is so put together and recorded accurately in terms of patients' clinical characteristics and how they've responded to treatment."
"We're very interested in making these resources and these samples available to outside groups in order for them to conduct similar research to both predict outcomes and figure out how to better monitor myeloma patients," Dr. Berenson ended.