Borja Sáez Ochoa elabora en la Universidad de Navarra un avanzado método de diagnóstico genético para el mieloma múltiple
Borja Sáez Ochoa develops an advanced genetic diagnostic method for multiple myeloma at the University of Navarra
The results of his doctoral thesis , developed at the School de Ciencias, are already being applied in more than 20 Spanish hospitals.
The researcher of the University of Navarra Borja Sáez Ochoa proposes a new method of genetic diagnosis for multiple myeloma (MM), a subject cancer of the bone marrow, which allows the disease to be detected in its earliest stages.
The thesis of this biologist, developed in the department of Genetics of the School of Sciences of the academic center and in the high school of Genetics Human of the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein, in Kiel, (Germany), has been oriented towards the study of the base Genetics and the subsequent development of strategies of cytogenetic diagnosis for the detection of the alterations with prognostic value.
For this purpose, he has analyzed, by means of statistical methods, the cytogenetic changes of a group of patients with MM. This methodology has made it possible to find associations between specific chromosomal changes, thus describing a new classification of the disease. Likewise, the fluorescence in situ hybridization technique led him to identify new recurrent genetic changes involved in the appearance of this pathology.
Multiple myeloma is a disease that affects mostly people over 60 years of age. In 2001, 1,716 new cases were detected and 1,554 patients died, 20 of them in Navarra. According to the researcher of the School of Sciences of the University of Navarra, "with the new diagnostic methods developed in this work, such as the FISH and FICTION strategies, we will be able to detect genetic alterations quickly and easily in very early stages of the disease, allowing an early diagnosis of the disease". In addition, he stresses that these procedures will promote "the description of molecular targets for future, more effective treatments for MM".
Precisely, these new tests for the genetic diagnosis of MM are already being applied in some twenty hospitals in Spain. "And in the not too distant future," says Borja Sáez, "these tests will make it possible to offer each patient the most appropriate treatment according to the genetic modifications they present" which, although they will not cure the disease, "will make it possible to transform it into a chronic and asymptomatic pathology".