WHY do we need this study?

The purpose of COSMOS is to understand how some bone marrow cells develop into a cancerous condition called myeloma.

Myeloma usually starts as a pre-cancerous condition in the bone marrow, called monoclonal gammopathy (MGUS), or smouldering myeloma, but not all people with these pre-cancerous conditions will develop myeloma. In fact, only a small percentage of such people will ever get myeloma.

COSMOS will investigate how these pre-cancerous conditions develop into myeloma. We will also study how other cells in the bone marrow can help the cancer to develop.

We hope this will help us understand how myeloma develops and what type of treatments will be most effective. The results of this work will provide information to help us design new treatments for this cancer.