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2nd Edition of International Cancer Research Conference

March 19-21, 2026 | Singapore

March 19 -21, 2026 | Singapore
Cancer Research 2026

Genetic and epigenetic alterations of SOX7 in multiple myeloma and allied neoplasms

Speaker at International Cancer Research Conference 2026 - Can Küçük
Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey
Title : Genetic and epigenetic alterations of SOX7 in multiple myeloma and allied neoplasms

Abstract:

Multiple myeloma (MM) is one of the most frequent hematological malignancies. Its incidence and mortality rate is globally increasing. Most MM patients experience relapse, which leads to poor prognosis. The genes associated with MM development or relapse have not been totally elucidated yet. The recurrently deleted 8p23.1 locus in MM includes tumor suppressor gene candidates. As a transcription factor, SOX7 was shown to be downregulated through genetic or epigenetic alterations in different cancer types. However, the aberrations of SOX7 were not evaluated in multiple myeloma or allied plasma cell neoplasms such as smoldering MM (SMM) or plasma cell leukemia (PCL). In this study, we reanalyzed the publicly available datasets to evaluate SOX7 copy number, promoter methylation, and transcript expression levels in MM or related neoplasms. Furthermore, we performed qPCR and qRT-PCR analyses with the in-house MM cohort to cross-validate SOX7 copy number and transcript level estimates. We observed frequent SOX7 deletions in newly diagnosed and relapsed MM cases. The SOX7 promoter was hypermethylated in most MM cell lines as well as many MM and PCL patient tumor samples. Consistent with these aberrations, SOX7 was transcriptionally silent in MM cell lines and underexpressed in MM and high-risk SMM cases. When we analyzed patient-matched MM cases, we observed moderate levels of positive correlation between SOX7 copy numbers in tumor tissues obtained at diagnosis and relapse. In these patient-matched samples, SOX7 deletion and promoter methylation levels had a tendency to be mutually exclusive. As a noteworthy observation, SOX7 promoter methylation levels were significantly higher in relapsed cases compared to the diagnostic ones. Given that small SOX7 mutations were very rare, deletion and promoter hypermethylation may be the main mechanisms for SOX7 underexpression in MM and allied neoplasms. These genetic and epigenetic aberrations may be pathologically and clinically signficant in these plasma cell neoplasms.

Biography:

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Can Küçük completed his Ph.D. studies on oncology and cancer biology at The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He performed post-doctoral studies at UNMC and City of Hope Medical Center. Dr. Küçük has publications in high impact journals such as Nature Communications, Blood, or PNAS. He earned prestigious international awards from the American Society of Hematology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Dr. Küçük’s research focuses on genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic aberrations causing lymphoid cancers to identify biomarkers that can improve diagnosis or prognostication of lymphoid cancers and to discover more effective therapeutic targets.

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