Project description:<p>The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) CoMMpass (Relating <u>C</u>linical <u>O</u>utcomes in <u>MM</u> to <u>P</u>ersonal <u>Ass</u>essment of Genetic Profile) trial (NCT01454297) is a longitudinal observation study of 1000 newly diagnosed myeloma patients receiving various standard approved treatments that aim at collecting tissue samples, genetic information, Quality of Life (QoL) and various disease and clinical outcomes over 10 years.</p>
Project description:Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell malignancy of the bone marrow. Despite therapeutic advances, multiple myeloma remains incurable and better risk stratification as well as new therapies are therefore highly needed. The proteome of multiple myeloma has not been systematically assessed before and holds the potential to uncover additional insight into disease biology and improved prognostic models. Here, we provide a comprehensive multi-omics analysis including deep tandem mass tags (TMT)-based quantitative global (phospho)proteomics, RNA sequencing and nanopore DNA sequencing of 138 primary patient-derived plasma cell malignancies encompassing treatment-naive multiple myeloma patients treated in clinical trials, plasma cell leukemia, and the premalignancy monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), as well as healthy controls. We found that the (phospho)proteome of malignant plasma cells is highly deregulated as compared to healthy plasma cells and is both defined by chromosomal alterations and extensive post-transcriptional regulation. A protein signature was identified that is associated with aggressive disease and more predictive for outcome than cytogenetic-based risk assessment in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. Integration with functional genetics and single-cell sequencing revealed generally and genetic subtype-specific deregulated proteins and pathways in plasma cell malignancies that include novel potential targets for (immuno)therapies. These findings provide new insights in the biology of multiple myeloma and will be a unique resource for investigating new therapeutic approaches.
Project description:Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell malignancy of the bone marrow. Despite therapeutic advances, multiple myeloma remains incurable and better risk stratification as well as new therapies are therefore highly needed. The proteome of multiple myeloma has not been systematically assessed before and holds the potential to uncover additional insight into disease biology and improved prognostic models. Here, we provide a comprehensive multi-omics analysis including deep tandem mass tag (TMT)-based quantitative global (phospho)proteomics, RNA sequencing and nanopore DNA sequencing of 138 primary patient-derived plasma cell malignancies encompassing treatment-naive multiple myeloma patients treated in clinical trials, plasma cell leukemia, and the premalignancy monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), as well as healthy controls. We found that the (phospho)proteome of malignant plasma cells is highly deregulated as compared to healthy plasma cells and is both defined by chromosomal alterations and extensive post-transcriptional regulation. A protein signature was identified that is associated with aggressive disease and more predictive for outcome than cytogenetic-based risk assessment in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. Integration with functional genetics and single-cell sequencing revealed generally and genetic subtype-specific deregulated proteins and pathways in plasma cell malignancies that include novel potential targets for (immuno)therapies. These findings provide new insights in the biology of multiple myeloma and will be a unique resource for investigating new therapeutic approaches.
Project description:A major driver of multiple myeloma is thought to be aberrant signaling, yet no kinase inhibitors have proven successful in the clinic. Here, we employ an integrated, systems approach combining phosphoproteomic and transcriptome analysis to dissect cellular signaling in multiple myeloma to inform precision medicine strategies. Collectively, these predictive models identify vulnerable signaling signatures and highlight surprising differences in functional signaling patterns between <I>NRAS</I> and <I>KRAS</I> mutants invisible to the genomic landscape. Transcriptional analysis suggests that aberrant MAPK pathway activation is only present in a fraction of <I>RAS</I>-mutated vs. WT <I>RAS</I> patients. These high-MAPK patients, enriched for <I>NRAS</I> Q61 mutations, have inferior outcomes whereas <I>RAS</I> mutations overall carry no survival impact. We further develop an interactive software tool to relate pharmacologic and genetic kinase dependencies in myeloma. These results may lead to improved stratification of MM patients in clinical trials while also revealing unexplored modes of Ras biology.
Project description:The precise molecular mechanism of action and targets through which thalidomide and related immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) exert their anti-tumor effects remains unclear. We investigated the role of cereblon (CRBN), a primary teratogenic target of thalidomide, in the anti-myeloma activity of IMiDs. CRBN depletion is initially cytotoxic to human myeloma cells but surviving cells with stable CRBN depletion become highly resistant to both lenalidomide and pomalidomide, but not to the unrelated drugs bortezomib, dexamethasone and melphalan. Acquired deletion of CRBN was found to be the primary genetic event differentiating isogenic MM1.S cell lines cultured to be sensitive or resistant to lenalidomide and pomalidomide. Gene expression changes induced by lenalidomide were dramatically suppressed in the presence of CRBN depletion further demonstrating that CRBN is required for lenalidomide activity. Downstream targets of CRBN include interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4) previously reported to also be a target of lenalidomide. Patients exposed to and putatively resistant to lenalidomide had lower CRBN levels in paired samples before and after therapy. In summary, CRBN is an essential requirement for IMiD activity, and a possible biomarker for the clinical assessment of anti-myeloma efficacy. We included 15 samples from multiple myeloma cell lines.