[The pathology and genetic background of myeloma].

Plasma cell myeloma is a heterogeneous hematologic malignancy of plasma cells, occurring dominantly in the elderly population. It is now accepted that all myeloma cases are preceded by a clinically silent expansion of clonal plasma cells, known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. Our knowledge on the genetics of myeloma is still limited and lags behind other well-characterized hematological malignancies. One of the reasons of this fact is the difficulty to induce metaphases within the malignant plasma cell population. With the development of new molecular techniques (microarrays and next generation sequencing), our understanding of the pathogenesis and progression of myeloma has been highly improved in the past years. This review offers an insight into this newly gained knowledge.