Project description:Tumor immune microenvironmental alterations occur early in multiple myeloma (MM) development. In this study, we aim to systematically characterize the tumor immune microenvironment (TME) and the tumor-immune interactions from precursor stages, i.e., monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering MM (SMM), to newly diagnosed MM, comparing these to healthy donors. CIBERSORT analysis revealed proportions of 27 cell types, including 10 innate immune cells (monocytes, M0/M1/M2 macrophages, resting/activated dendritic cells, resting/activated mast cells, eosinophils, and neutrophils), 7 T cell subsets (CD8+ T cells, naive CD4+ T cells, resting/activated memory CD4+ T cells, follicular helper T cells, regulatory T cells, and gamma delta T cells), resting/activated NK cells, naive B cells, memory B cells, plasma cells, myeloma plasma cells, memory plasma cells, osteoblasts, osteoclasts and adipocytes. We removed plasma cells (PC) from the 100% total cell proportions to avoid bias resulting from different tumor burdens. We found that the proportions of neutrophils, mast cells, and monocytes account for the majority of innate immune cells and were decreased in NDMM and its precursor stages when compared with NBM. We noticed a significant abundance of M2 macrophages in NDMM, but not in the precursor stages. The proportion of CD8+ T cells was increased at the SMM and MM stages, and the proportion of activated memory CD4+ T cells continued to decrease from NBM to MGUS, SMM, and MM. We performed correlation analysis of immune cell proportions with the time of progression of MGUS and SMM patients. We observed neutrophil proportions were negatively correlated with the time to progression in SMM patients, indicating more neutrophils predict inferior outcomes for SMM patients. However, in NDMM patients, we observed that the neutrophil percentage was decreased in patients with high-risk status based on the 70-gene Prognostic Risk Score (GEP-70) or at stage III of International Staging System (ISS), and patients with high proportions of neutrophils had a significantly superior overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS). For T cell populations, we observed that the proportions of CD8+ T cells were negatively correlated with the time of progression in SMM patients and the γδ T cells were positively correlated. We observed the proportions of γδ T cells were also positively correlated with the time of progression in MGUS patients. Consistent with the time-to-progression data, high-risk SMM patients showed higher proportions of CD8+ T cells and lower proportions of naïve CD4+ T cells and γδ T cells.
Project description:The multiple myeloma (MM) tumor microenvironment is thought to influence patient outcomes. To test this, we computationally enumerated relevant cell populations in 436 newly diagnosed MM patients. Unsupervised clustering identified 5 clusters, with patients in Cluster 5 having significantly worse outcomes: 13 fewer months of progression-free survival (P = 0.002) and 8 fewer months of overall survival (P = 0.040). Cell type analysis showed that patients in Cluster 5 had elevated CD8+ T cell and B cell populations, but low granulocyte levels. A granulocyte signature identified an additional 14% of patients with elevated risk but lacking International Staging System stage III or GEP-70 high- risk status
Project description:The multiple myeloma (MM) tumor microenvironment is thought to influence patient outcomes. To test this, we computationally enumerated relevant cell populations in 436 newly diagnosed MM patients. Unsupervised clustering identified 5 clusters, with patients in Cluster 5 having significantly worse outcomes: 13 fewer months of progression-free survival (P = 0.002) and 8 fewer months of overall survival (P = 0.040). Cell type analysis showed that patients in Cluster 5 had elevated CD8+ T cell and B cell populations, but low granulocyte levels. A granulocyte signature identified an additional 14% of patients with elevated risk but lacking International Staging System stage III or GEP-70 high- risk status
Project description:The multiple myeloma (MM) tumor microenvironment is thought to influence patient outcomes. To test this, we computationally enumerated relevant cell populations in 436 newly diagnosed MM patients. Unsupervised clustering identified 5 clusters, with patients in Cluster 5 having significantly worse outcomes: 13 fewer months of progression-free survival (P = 0.002) and 8 fewer months of overall survival (P = 0.040). Cell type analysis showed that patients in Cluster 5 had elevated CD8+ T cell and B cell populations, but low granulocyte levels. A granulocyte signature identified an additional 14% of patients with elevated risk but lacking International Staging System stage III or GEP-70 high- risk status
Project description:The immune system is strongly linked to the maintenance of healthy bone. Inflammatory cytokines, specifically, are crucial to skeletal homeostasis and any dysregulation can result in detrimental health complications. Interleukins, such as interleukin 6 (IL-6), act as osteoclast differentiation modulators and as such, must be carefully monitored and regulated. IL-6 encourages osteoclastogenesis when bound to progenitors and can cause excessive osteoclastic activity and osteolysis when overly abundant. Numerous bone diseases are tied to IL-6 overexpression, including rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and bone-metastatic cancers. In the latter, IL-6 can be released with growth factors into the bone marrow microenvironment (BMM) during osteolysis from bone matrix or from cancer cells and osteoblasts in an inflammatory response to cancer cells. Thus, IL-6 helps create an ideal microenvironment for oncogenesis and metastasis. Multiple myeloma (MM) is a blood cancer that homes to the BMM and is strongly tied to overexpression of IL-6 and bone loss. The roles of IL-6 in the progression of MM are discussed in this review, including roles in bone homing, cancer-associated bone loss, disease progression and drug resistance. MM disease progression often includes the development of drug-resistant clones, and patients commonly struggle with reoccurrence. As such, therapeutics that specifically target the microenvironment, rather than the cancer itself, are ideal and IL-6, and its myriad of downstream signaling partners, are model targets. Lastly, current and potential therapeutic interventions involving IL-6 and connected signaling molecules are discussed in this review.