0000000000020217

AUTHOR

Catarina Maia

Single-Cell Characterization of the Multiple Myeloma (MM) Immune Microenvironment Identifies CD27-Negative T Cells As Potential Source of Tumor-Reactive Lymphocytes

Background: The broad use of immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) and the breakthrough of novel immunotherapies in MM, urge the optimization of immune monitoring to help tailoring treatment based on better prediction of patients' response according to their immune status. For example, current T cells immune monitoring is of limited value because the phenotype of tumor-reactive T cells is uncertain. Aims: To characterize the MM immune microenvironment at the single-cell level and to identify clinically relevant subsets for effective immune monitoring. Methods: We used a semi-automated pipeline to unveil full cellular diversity based on unbiased clustering, in a large flow cytometry dataset of 86 n…

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Biological and clinical significance of dysplastic hematopoiesis in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

On behalf of the PETHEMA/GEM Cooperative Group.

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Preclinical models for prediction of immunotherapy outcomes and immune evasion mechanisms in genetically heterogeneous multiple myeloma

AbstractThe historical lack of preclinical models reflecting the genetic heterogeneity of multiple myeloma (MM) hampers the advance of therapeutic discoveries. To circumvent this limitation, we screened mice engineered to carry eight MM lesions (NF-κB, KRAS, MYC, TP53, BCL2, cyclin D1, MMSET/NSD2 and c-MAF) combinatorially activated in B lymphocytes following T cell-driven immunization. Fifteen genetically diverse models developed bone marrow (BM) tumors fulfilling MM pathogenesis. Integrative analyses of ∼500 mice and ∼1,000 patients revealed a common MAPK–MYC genetic pathway that accelerated time to progression from precursor states across genetically heterogeneous MM. MYC-dependent time …

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Longitudinal Immunogenomic Profiling of Tumor and Immune Cells for Minimally-Invasive Monitoring of Smoldering Multiple Myeloma (SMM): The Immunocell Study

Background: Although great strides were made in the management of MM, our best chances to eradicate this malignancy may lie in preventing its progression.Most current models to predict risk of transformation in SMM are commonly established at diagnosis and not reevaluated over time, because some parameters such as tumor burden or genetic abnormalities require invasive bone marrow (BM) aspirates. It could be hypothesized that periodic monitoring of tumor biomarkers is needed to improve risk-stratification of SMM patients, and so would be new minimally-invasive methods that can replace those performed in BM samples. Such methods should also monitor immune profiles, to identify patients with s…

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Immunological Biomarkers of Fatal COVID-19: A Study of 868 Patients

Information on the immunopathobiology of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is rapidly increasing; however, there remains a need to identify immune features predictive of fatal outcome. This large-scale study characterized immune responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection using multidimensional flow cytometry, with the aim of identifying high-risk immune biomarkers. Holistic and unbiased analyses of 17 immune cell-types were conducted on 1,075 peripheral blood samples obtained from 868 COVID-19 patients and on samples from 24 patients presenting with non-SARS-CoV-2 infections and 36 healthy donors. Immune profiles of COVID-19 patients were significa…

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Circulating tumor and immune cells for minimally invasive risk stratification of smoldering multiple myeloma

Abstract Purpose: Early intervention in smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) requires optimal risk stratification to avoid under- and overtreatment. We hypothesized that replacing bone marrow (BM) plasma cells (PC) for circulating tumor cells (CTC), and adding immune biomarkers in peripheral blood (PB) for the identification of patients at risk of progression due to lost immune surveillance, could improve the International Myeloma Working Group 20/2/20 model. Experimental Design: We report the outcomes of 150 patients with SMM enrolled in the iMMunocell study, in which serial assessment of tumor and immune cells in PB was performed every 6 months for a period of 3 years since enrollment. Resul…

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FlowCT for the analysis of large immunophenotypic data sets and biomarker discovery in cancer immunology

Key Points FlowCT is a new computational workspace for unveiling cellular diversity and objectively identifying biomarkers in large immune monitoring studies.FlowCT identified T-cell biomarkers predictive of malignant transformation and survival in SMM and active MM data sets.

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Immune biomarkers to predict SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness in patients with hematological malignancies

AbstractThere is evidence of reduced SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness in patients with hematological malignancies. We hypothesized that tumor and treatment-related immunosuppression can be depicted in peripheral blood, and that immune profiling prior to vaccination can help predict immunogenicity. We performed a comprehensive immunological characterization of 83 hematological patients before vaccination and measured IgM, IgG, and IgA antibody response to four viral antigens at day +7 after second-dose COVID-19 vaccination using multidimensional and computational flow cytometry. Health care practitioners of similar age were the control group (n = 102). Forty-four out of 59 immune cell types …

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Immunologic characterization of COVID-19 patients with hematological cancer

Not available.

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