In 2005, a large international consortium of myeloma key opinion leaders defined a staging system on the basis of 10,750 patients from three continents that was about to be the new standard: the International Staging System (ISS), that based its three-group stratification on a combination of the two most powerful and reproducible markers – albumin and β-2 microglobulin (24). This evidence concerns the gene ALB and plasma cell myeloma.