Authors
Hongwei Tang, William C Pilcher, Huihuang Yan, Annamalai Sivasankar, Jinzhuang Dou, Suganti Shivaram, Mariam Khanfar, Neeraj Sharma, Stacey J Lehman, Shulan Tian, Surendra Dasari, Cinthya J Zepeda-Mendoza, Mahek Bai, Joselle Cook, Nadine Abdallah, Abiola Bolarinwa, Emilie I Anderson, Taxiarchis V Kourelis, S Vincent Rajkumar, Shaji K Kumar, Megan Weivoda, Felicia Gomez, Manoj Bhasin, Linda B Baughn
Published in
Blood. Oct 05, 2026. Epub Oct 05, 2026.
Abstract
The immune tumor microenvironment (iTME) plays a crucial role in disease biology of plasma cell (PC) dyscrasias, but remains poorly characterized in self-identified Black individuals, a population at increased risk. Mass cytometry and scRNA-seq of 128 bone marrow aspirates revealed significant changes in immune cell composition across the disease spectrum, including shifts from naïve to effector T cells with declines in B cells, MAIT, pDCs, and increases in monocytes with disease progression. Self-identified Black patients had higher relative proportions of terminally differentiated T cells and lower monocytes in newly diagnosed and treated multiple myeloma (MM). ScRNA-seq revealed genes overexpressed in self-identified Black individuals were enriched for E2F targets and G2-M checkpoints, while reduced genes were enriched for TNF-α/NF-kB, interferon and inflammatory responses pathways. These findings were supported by genetic ancestry and validated in an independent dataset of 286 patients with MM from the MMRF Immune Atlas. Self-identified race and African genetic similarity are significantly associated with remodeling the MM iTME, with potential implications for disease biology and treatment response.
PMID:
42832394
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 06 Oct 2026.
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