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Video

What is the immune microenvironment? What is the role of the immune microenvironment progression of smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) to active myeloma?

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• July 20, 2025

Description

Learn about immune microenvironment in this HealthTree University lesson by cancer specialists.

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Transcript

What is the immune microenvironment? How does the immune microenvironment affect the progression of smoldering myeloma to active myeloma? We know that there are patients who may have a clone like a 17p clone, a 4;14 clone, but they don't progress. That's probably because their immune system is capable of controlling things. So we need to understand better what causes that progression from MGUS with smoldering myeloma to active disease. And is it an altered immune system along with secondary hits and clonal, heterogeneity and mutations and expansion. And how can we control both of them. Because if we can harness the immune system to use immunotherapy and potentially prevent completely or cure myeloma before it happens, then that's the best way for us to truly eradicated disease. People have been studying the immune system. There's less information on the role of the immune system in this setting. But there are some papers showing that there were differences is in the immune cells, in the normal immune system of individuals with a non progressive versus the progressive disease. There are problems studying it because you have the presence of these cells. And if there are more of these cells. The cells could probably change the immune system. So it’s not knowing what's the hen and what's the egg here. Is it the cells that change the immune system, or is it the immune system that allow the cells to become more and more active? It's very hard to do these types of investigations. maybe different types of laboratory models could be done. I could think that maybe having mouse models where you could move cells across different mice to see if more active cells put in another environment, maybe would change the immune system and so forth. Obviously, there will be limitations with those models as 
So it's very hard to do these types of experiments. There is a lot of investigations. There are a lot of investigations ongoing in this field as well.

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