Anne-Marie Hee­gaard

Pain in Mul­ti­ple Myelo­ma – inter­ac­tion of the can­cer microen­vi­ron­ment with the sen­so­ry ner­vous system

Abstract

Mul­ti­ple myelo­ma is a hema­to­log­ic malig­nan­cy and at the time of diag­no­sis more than half the patients with mul­ti­ple myelo­ma suf­fer from bone pain, which is often severe. We have iden­ti­fied bone mar­row den­er­va­tion and periosteal nerve sprout­ing (cal­ci­tonin gene-relat­ed pep­tide and growth asso­ci­at­ed pro­tein 43 pos­i­tive fibers) in a mouse mod­el of mul­ti­ple myelo­ma-induced bone pain and we have pro­vid­ed human data sup­port­ing these findings.

Fur­ther­more, in the mouse mod­el, gene expres­sion changes were found in the dor­sal root gan­glia inner­vat­ing the myelo­ma-bear­ing bone sug­gest­ed alter­ations in path­ways asso­ci­at­ed with cell cycle, immune response and neu­ronal sig­nal­ing. Over­all, our results sug­gest that mul­ti­ple myelo­ma induces a range of periph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem alter­ations that may con­tribute to bone pain.

Biography/​Link

Anne-Marie Hee­gaard, M.D., Ph.D. is Pro­fes­sor at the Depart­ment of Drug Design & Phar­ma­col­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen, Den­mark. Anne-Marie Heegaard’s lab­o­ra­to­ry focus­es on mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing malig­nant and non-malig­nant bone pain. Her research is trans­la­tion­al and ranges from in vit­ro stud­ies to ani­mal mod­els and clin­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions. Anne-Marie Hee­gaard is the coör­di­na­tor of the Marie Skłodows­ka-Curie Actions Doc­tor­al Net­work Bone­PainI­II and she was the coör­di­na­tor of the Euro­pean Inno­v­a­tive Train­ing Net­works Bone­Pain (2015 – 2018) and Bone­PainII (2019 – 2022).