So, my name is Adolf Ollemann. I'm an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine and the associate director of translational research at the Myeloma Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai. Today, I gave a presentation about S108A9, which is a molecule that we believe could be a biomarker for resistance to certain therapies in multiple myeloma. So, we see that patients who in general have a bad prognosis have an elevated level of this molecule in their peripheral blood. So, we were trying to see does that elevated level translate to exhausted T cells that might impair their clinical care when they receive certain agents like novel bispecific biotherapies and CAR T therapies. Exhausted T cells are, especially in T cell directed therapy, you have a bispecific antibody that has one end that recognizes the tumor and another end that recognizes the T cell. And what it does is it brings the T cells directly to the tumor cell. And what ends up happening is as patients age, and it's just in general as we age, a T cell, once it gets to its target, starts to destroy it. So this guides the T cell to the tumor cell. But when the T cell gets overstimulated or has been asked to do a lot of work, it just is not as good as destroying the tumor as it should be. So what we believe could be a mechanism of right now T cell directed therapy prognosis and resistance mechanism is that the T cell itself can no longer find its target and do its job. And we consider that to be a dysfunction or an exhausted T cell. So our work here is to basically identify certain molecules that could be causing this T cell exhaustion. And more importantly for patients, find a molecule that can prevent this T cell exhaustion and kind of make these T cells ready to do their job and find the tumor and kill it. So we investigated it and what we ended up seeing is that this molecule, when in experiments in the lab, when we actually incubate a patient T cells and other T cells with it, it actually does increase the percentage of exhausted cells that are present in the dish. And what we ended up doing is in collaboration with other groups, we found a way that we can mitigate and rescue these particular T cells. So now we have a molecule that is causing these cells to not be as effective as they could be. And the use of certain therapeutics could be a really powerful combination for the treatment of multiple myeloma. So what we showed is that when you use a certain monoclonal antibody that really targets and prevents the binding of this molecule to certain T cells, it actually prevents them from getting exhausted. And therefore we get a recapitulation of antigen specific activity. So therefore we get in a dish, have patient cells be able to kill tumor again and very well and not be impeded by this particular molecule. So we are working on incorporating this into particularly bringing it to clinic and hopefully eventually have a way that we can combine this with certain bi-specific and other T cell directed therapies to really enhance patient care. If our videos have helped you in any way and you're able to, please consider making a donation to help us continue this important work. Your gift will go three times as far when we reach $500,000 by the end of the year. Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference and we're deeply grateful for your support.
HealthTree • December 17, 2025