Identification of novel pathogenic copy number aberrations in multiple myeloma: the Malaysian context

Multiple myeloma is an incurable disease. Little is known about the genetic and molecular mechanisms governing the pathogenesis of multiple myeloma. The risk of multiple myeloma predispositions varies among different ethnicities. More than 50% of myeloma cases showed normal karyotypes with conventional cytogenetic analysis due to the low mitotic activity and content of plasma cells in the bone marrow. In the present study, high resolution array comparative genomic hybridization technique was used to identify copy number aberrations in 63 multiple myeloma patients of Malaysia.