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Cancer immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells can cause immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS). However, the molecular mechanisms leading to ICANS are not well understood. Here we examined the role of microglia using mouse models and cohorts of individuals with ICANS. CD19-directed CAR (CAR19) T cell transfer in B cell lymphoma-bearing mice caused microglia activation and neurocognitive deficits. The TGFβ-activated kinase-1 (TAK1)-NF-κB-p38 MAPK pathway was activated in microglia after CAR19 T cell transfer. Pharmacological TAK1 inhibition or genetic Tak1 deletion in microglia using Cx3cr1 CreER :Tak1 fl/fl mice resulted in reduced microglia activation and improved neurocognitive activity. TAK1 inhibition allowed for potent CAR19-induced antilymphoma effects. Individuals with ICANS exhibited microglia activation in vivo when studied by translocator protein positron emission tomography, and imaging mass cytometry revealed a shift from resting to activated microglia. In summary, we prove a role for microglia in ICANS pathophysiology, identify the TAK1-NF-κB-p38 MAPK axis as a pathogenic signaling pathway and provide a rationale to test TAK1 inhibition in a clinical trial for ICANS prevention after CAR19 T cell-based cancer immunotherapy., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.)

Monoclonal gammopathies are a frequently diagnosed entity. However, the diagnosis is not always clinically relevant. The diagnosis of a monoclonal gammopathy requires serum electrophoresis, immunofixation and free light chain measurement. Sometimes, monoclonal gammopathies occur in the course of transient or autoimmune inflammation. Further diagnostics should only be performed after risk assessment according to Mayo criteria. In non-low risk patients, a symptomatic myeloma has to be ruled out via SLiM-CRAB criteria. The diagnostic work-up should include whole-body MRI and a bone marrow puncture as well as a 24 h urine sample. If it does not imply myeloma, the diagnosis of MGUS is confirmed and a follow-up after 6 months is recommended. After that, low-risk patients only need SLiM-CRAB screening at clinical signs of progression. All other patients should receive serologic follow-ups once a year. Importantly, MGUS patients show higher morbidity. Amongst a higher prevalence of osteoporosis and immunodeficiency, a wide array of MGUS-associated diseases such as AL amyloidosis, deposition diseases and Fc binding-dependent effects can occur. This article gives an overview over the work-up, observation and caveats of monoclonal gammopathy of (un)known significance., Competing Interests: Die Autorinnen/Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht., (Thieme. All rights reserved.)

The chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4), which is overexpressed in many solid and hematologic malignancies, can be targeted for radiopeptide therapy via the antagonist pentixather. The biokinetics and dosimetry of 177 Lu-pentixather and 90 Y-pentixather were analyzed in this study. Methods: This retrospective study was a standardized reevaluation of data collected for treatment planning. Nineteen patients with complete sets of planar whole-body scans over at least 4 d and a single SPECT/CT scan after administration of 200 MBq of 177 Lu-pentixather were included. Kinetics were measured in the whole body, in tissues with activity retention, and in 10 individuals in the blood. Time-integrated activity coefficients and tissue-absorbed doses were derived. Results: Increased uptake of pentixather was observed in the kidneys, liver, spleen, and bone marrow, inducing respective median absorbed doses of 0.91 Gy (range, 0.38-3.47 Gy), 0.71 Gy (range, 0.39-1.17 Gy), 0.58 Gy (range, 0.34-2.26 Gy), and 0.47 Gy (range, 0.14-2.33 Gy) per GBq of 177 Lu-pentixather and 3.75 Gy (range, 1.48-12.2 Gy), 1.61 Gy (range, 1.14-2.97 Gy), 1.66 Gy (range, 0.97-6.69 Gy), and 1.06 Gy (range, 0.27-4.45 Gy) per GBq of 90 Y-pentixather. In most tissues, activity increased during the first day after the administration of 177 Lu-pentixather and afterward decayed with mean effective half-lives of 41 ± 10 h (range, 24-64 h) in the kidneys and median half-lives of 109, 86, and 92 h in the liver, spleen, and bone marrow, respectively. Maximum uptake per kidney was 2.2% ± 1.0% (range, 0.6%-5.1%). In organs showing no specific uptake, absorbed doses exceeding 0.3 Gy/GBq of 90 Y-pentixather were estimated for the urinary bladder and for tissues adjacent to accumulating organs such as the adrenal glands, bone surface, and gallbladder. Dose estimates for tumors and extramedullary lesions ranged from 1.5 to 18.2 Gy/GBq of 90 Y-pentixather. Conclusion: In patients with hematologic neoplasms, absorbed doses calculated for bone marrow and extramedullary lesions are sufficient to be effective as an adjunct to high-dose chemotherapies before stem cell transplantation., (© 2022 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.)

Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer characterized by clonal proliferation of plasma cells in the bone marrow. In recent years, several new drugs have been added to the therapeutic landscape of multiple myeloma, which have contributed to increased survival rates. However, while the use of therapeutics has evolved, there is still a group of high-risk patients who do not benefit from current treatment strategies. Risk stratification and risk-adapted treatment are crucial to identify the group of patients with urgent need for novel therapies. Gene expression profiling has been introduced as a tool for risk stratification in multiple myeloma based on the genetic make-up of myeloma cells. In this review we discuss the challenge of defining the high-risk multiple myeloma patient. We focus on the standardized analysis of myeloma cancer cells by gene expression profiling and describe how gene expression profiling provides additional insights for optimal risk-adapted treatment of patients suffering from multiple myeloma., Competing Interests: AKS has received consulting fee from SkylineDx. SU and PS have received research funding and consulting fees from SkylineDx. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Cerchione, Usmani, Stewart, Kaiser, Rasche, Kortüm, Mateos, Spencer, Sonneveld and Anderson.)

Background: Natural language processing (NLP) is a powerful tool supporting the generation of Real-World Evidence (RWE). There is no NLP system that enables the extensive querying of parameters specific to multiple myeloma (MM) out of unstructured medical reports. We therefore created a MM-specific ontology to accelerate the information extraction (IE) out of unstructured text., Methods: Our MM ontology consists of extensive MM-specific and hierarchically structured attributes and values. We implemented "A Rule-based Information Extraction System" (ARIES) that uses this ontology. We evaluated ARIES on 200 randomly selected medical reports of patients diagnosed with MM., Results: Our system achieved a high F1-Score of 0.92 on the evaluation dataset with a precision of 0.87 and recall of 0.98., Conclusions: Our rule-based IE system enables the comprehensive querying of medical reports. The IE accelerates the extraction of data and enables clinicians to faster generate RWE on hematological issues. RWE helps clinicians to make decisions in an evidence-based manner. Our tool easily accelerates the integration of research evidence into everyday clinical practice.

Based on ELOQUENT-2, combination therapy with the monoclonal antibody elotuzumab was approved for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma in the US and Europe. However, outside clinical trials, the optimal integration of elotuzumab into the sequence of treatment lines remains to be determined. Therefore, we analyzed safety and efficacy of elotuzumab/immunomodulatory drug combinations in a real-life cohort of 33 patients from our institution. The most frequent grade 3/4 adverse event was lymphopenia which did not increase the incidence of viral reactivations. After a median of four prior treatment lines, an overall response rate of 60% and a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 8 months were observed. The presence of cytogenetic high-risk status had no impact on PFS while low disease burden and high numbers of natural killer (NK)-cells at treatment initiation were associated with longer PFS. We observed an extramedullary relapse in three patients, associated with reduced expression of the elotuzumab target antigen SLAMF7 on extramedullary myeloma cells in one patient. Thus, biomarkers like disease burden, NK-cell count and SLAMF7 expression on myeloma cells may help to define myeloma patients with high likelihood to respond to elotuzumab treatment. Prospective trials investigating these biomarkers in larger patient cohorts are highly warranted.

We investigated the utility of integrin-linked kinase (ILK) as a target for therapeutic intervention in multiple myeloma (MM). ILK (over-)expression was assessed in primary samples and MM cell lines, and the molecular and physiological consequences of siRNA-mediated ILK ablation were compared to treatment with the small molecule inhibitor QLT0267. Whereas ILK expression was ubiquitous, overexpression was only rarely observed in patient biopsies. ILK knockdown had no effect on the viability or survival pathway activity pattern of MM cells. Conversely, QLT0267 induced cell death in MM cell lines and most primary tumor samples via the intrinsic apoptotic pathway. Although this effect was largely tumor cell-specific it is unlikely to have been mediated via ILK. We conclude that ILK does not play a prominent role in the promotion or sustenance of established MM., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This is a comment on the IFM 2005-01 Phase III trial that compared, for the first time, the efficacy and the safety of a bortezomib-containing induction regimen with conventional chemotherapy before autologous stem-cell transplantation in multiple myeloma (MM) patients. Between 2005 and 2008, 482 patients were randomized to vincristin/doxorubicin/dexamethasone (VAD), VAD + dexamethasone, cyclophosphamide, etoposide and cisplatin (DCEP) consolidation, bortezomib + dexamethasone and bortezomib + dexamethasone + DCEP consolidation followed by autologous stem-cell transplantation. The trial was conducted in 89 sites in France, Belgium and Switzerland. The novel agent-based induction therapy (bortezomib/dexamethasone) achieved higher complete remission (CR)/nearCR rates, as well as less treatment-related mortality, but higher rates of polyneuropathy than the conventional chemotherapy-based induction therapy (VAD/VAD + DCEP). The difference in progression-free survival (PFS) difference was not statistically significant but a trend to longer PFS was seen to favor to the bortezomib-containing regimen; bortezomib and dexamethason (BD) was, therefore, proposed to be a standard of care by the authors of the study., (© 2011 Informa UK, Ltd.)

Over the last few decades therapy for multiple myeloma has improved remarkably. In particular, the introduction of novel agents has allowed improved response rates prior to, and after, stem cell transplantation with extension of progression-free survival in high-risk patients. Nevertheless, most patients relapse, leaving multiple myeloma an incurable disease. Despite being the only treatment option that has real curative potential, allogeneic transplantation has not shown its superiority to autologous transplantation due to its high morbidity and mortality rates. This review highlights how novel agents might help to reduce treatment-related mortality and to improve tumor control prior to and post-allogeneic stem cell transplant, which will hopefully result in significantly improved long-term disease control, and maybe a cure following this treatment modality.