Background: Early therapeutic intervention in high-risk SMM (HR-SMM) has demonstrated benefit in previous studies of lenalidomide with or without dexamethasone. Triplets and quadruplet studies have been examined in this same population. However, to date, none of these studies examined the impact of depth of response on long-term outcomes of participants treated with lenalidomide-based therapy, and whether the use of the 20/2/20 model or the addition of genomic alterations can further define the population that would benefit the most from early therapeutic intervention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Multiple myeloma (MM) develops from well-defined precursor stages; however, invasive bone marrow (BM) biopsy limits screening and monitoring strategies for patients. We enumerated circulating tumor cells (CTC) from 261 patients (84 monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, 155 smoldering multiple myeloma, and 22 MM), with neoplastic cells detected in 84%. We developed a novel approach, MinimuMM-seq, which enables the detection of translocations and copy-number abnormalities through whole-genome sequencing of highly pure CTCs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple myeloma (MM) is a haematological malignancy of plasma cells characterized by substantial intraclonal genetic heterogeneity. Although therapeutic advances made in the past few years have led to improved outcomes and longer survival, MM remains largely incurable. Over the past decade, genomic analyses of patient samples have demonstrated that MM is not a single disease but rather a spectrum of haematological entities that all share similar clinical symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntrinsically disordered proteins have dramatically changed the structure-function paradigm of proteins in the 21 century. Resilin is a native elastic insect protein, which features intrinsically disordered structure, unusual multi-stimuli responsiveness and outstanding resilience. Advances in computational techniques, polypeptide synthesis methods and modular protein engineering routines have led to the development of novel resilin-like polypeptides (RLPs) including modular RLPs, expanding their applications in tissue engineering, drug delivery, bioimaging, biosensors, catalysis and bioelectronics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, we present experimental observations and phenomenological modeling of the intermittent dynamics that emerge while mitigating thermoacoustic instability by rotating the otherwise static swirler in a lean premixed, laboratory-scale combustor. Starting with a self-excited thermoacoustically unstable combustor, here we find that a progressive increase in swirler rotation rate does not uniformly decrease amplitudes of coherent, sinusoidal pressure or heat-release-rate oscillations. Instead, these oscillations emerge as high-amplitude bursts separated by low-amplitude noise in the signal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple myeloma (MM) is a largely incurable haematological malignancy defined by the clonal proliferation of malignant plasma cells (PCs) within the bone marrow. Clonal heterogeneity has recently been established as a feature in MM, however, the subclonal evolution associated with disease progression has not been described. Here, we performed whole-exome sequencing of serial samples from 10 patients, providing new insights into the progression from monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smouldering MM (SMM), to symptomatic MM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple Myeloma (MM) is a haematological malignancy characterised by the clonal expansion of plasma cells (PCs) within the bone marrow. Despite advances in therapy, MM remains a largely incurable disease with a median survival of 6 years. In almost all cases, the development of MM is preceded by the benign PC condition Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance (MGUS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdipocytes (AdCs) and osteoblasts (OBs) are derived from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and differentiation toward either lineage is both mutually exclusive and transcriptionally controlled. Recent studies implicate the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway as important in determining MSC fate, with inhibition of mTOR promoting OB differentiation and suppressing AdC differentiation. mTOR functions within two distinct multiprotein complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2, each of which contains the unique adaptor protein, raptor or rictor, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF