Bart Barlogie, MD, PhD
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Bart Barlogie, MD, PhD
Director
Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
4301 W. Markham Street, Suite 816
Little Rock, AR 72205
From the inception of
the myeloma program at UAMS in 1989, our physician-scientist team has
been totally committed toward
• furthering insights in disease biology, genetics, gene expression
profiling (GEP)
• refining diagnostic and staging tools (MRI and FDG-PET-CT);
• and advancing therapeutics through intense translational research
The structure of our comprehensive translational research program,
“Growth Control in Multiple Myeloma,” has afforded discoveries that
were critically dependent on
• a large patient referral base;
• tight, long-term follow-up;
• integrated basic–clinical investigation;
• and statistical power to interpret findings in the context of historical
patients with comprehensive annotations of clinical course and
therapeutic interventions as well as availability of samples and
laboratory correlates in our database
The overall objective of our research is to understand myeloma (MM )
growth in the context of its interaction with the bone marrow
microenvironment (ME) in order to translate this knowledge into
smarter MM growth control in patients.
Unlike other myeloma research programs, the Arkansas approach is
uniquely focused on the “total” treatment of patients, not just from
the point of view of our Total Therapy strategy of applying all
currently available agents upfront, but also in reference to our
long-term follow-up of patients.
We have generated an unprecedented treasure of bone marrow samples
annotated according to the phase of therapy at the time of
procurement. We have GEP studies of MM and the bone marrow stroma from
over 1000 cases and more than 70,000 metaphase karyotypes from more
than 7000 individuals with MM. Additionally, MRI and PET-CT studies
have been performed for almost all patients, leading to the
recognition of focal lesion (FL) disease with unique biological and
molecular characteristics. This wealth of data has allowed us to
validate a GEP-based risk index and has provided evidence for a MM-
bone marrow microenvironment (ME) interaction that is associated with
both GEP-defined risk and molecular subgroup classification.
An adequately large sample size is critical for MM therapeutic trials
to have a significant impact on clinical practice. The Myeloma
Institute has maintained an annual referral of about 250 newly
diagnosed, untreated patients, who are thus eligible for Total Therapy
treatment protocol. Other trials have been available for patients
presenting with renal failure, advanced age, or hematopoietic
compromise.
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