Identifying metabolic adaptations characteristic of multiple myeloma cells via targeted sphingolipids concentrations from bone marrow and peripheral plasma
Project description:Interferon regulator factor 4 (IRF4) is characterized to be a member of interferon regulatory family, which is predominantly expressed in bone marrow plasma cells of patients with multiple myeloma (MM). Recent studies indicated IRF4 is critical for T-help cells (Th17) differentiation and interleukin-17 (IL-17) secretion. Here, a total of 58 MM patients were enrolled in this study, the proportions of Th17 cells and T regulatory (Treg) cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were determined by flow cytometric analysis. Immunohistochemistry was employed to detect the IRF4 expression in bone marrow. Herein, we observed a significant increase of IRF4 in bone marrow accompanied with a notable up-regulation of Th17 cells in PBMC within MM patients compared with healthy donors. Furthermore, the proportions of Th17 cells and serum IL-17 levels were higher in patients with stage III than stage I & II MM patients, and those parameters were positively correlated with the expression of IRF4 in these cases. These results for the first time indicate that a crosstalk between IRF4 and Th17 cells is associated with MM prognosis, and IRF4 may be served an important target for MM immunotherapy.
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:Multiple myeloma (MM) is still incurable due to resistance against various therapies. Thus, the identification of biomarkers predicting progression is urgently needed. Here, we evaluated four biomarkers in bone marrow and peripheral blood of MM patients for their prognostic significance.Bone marrow- and peripheral blood plasma levels of FLT3-L, soluble TIE2, endostatin, and osteoactivin were determined in patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS, n = 14/n = 4), patients with newly diagnosed MM (NDMM, n = 42/n = 31) and patients with relapsed/refractory MM (RRMM, n = 27/n = 16) by sandwich ELISA.Median FLT3-L expression increased from MGUS (58.77 pg/ml in bone marrow; 80.40 pg/ml in peripheral blood) to NDMM (63.15 pg/ml in bone marrow; 85.05 pg/ml in peripheral blood) and was maximal in RRMM (122 pg/ml in bone marrow; 160.47 pg/ml in peripheral blood; NDMM vs. RRMM p<0.001). A cut-off value of FLT3-L >92 pg/ml in bone marrow and >121 pg/ml in peripheral blood was associated with relapse or refractoriness in MM patients. FLT3-L was found to be a high predictive marker for discrimination between NDMM and RRMM as well in bone marrow as in peripheral blood (AUC 0.75 in bone marrow; vs 0.84 in peripheral blood).High levels of FLT3-L in bone marrow and peripheral blood of MM patients identify patients with progressive disease and are associated with relapse or refractoriness in MM patients. FLT3-L could be useful as a marker to identify RRMM patients and should be evaluated as target for future therapies.
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