Sean Jordan

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....

The bone marrow immune microenvironment (BMME) is a critical factor in multiple myeloma (MM) pathogenesis. Despite higher incidence of MM among self-identified African Americans, the relationship between African genetic similarity and the BMME remains unclear. We present the largest analysis to date assessing the impact of Ancestry on the BMME in myeloma (N=320, including 64 with ≥50% African genetic similarity, AFR-High) leveraging our recently generated Immune Atlas. AFR-High was associated...

Medulloblastoma is the most common pediatric malignancy of the brain and spine and a major cause of childhood cancer-related morbidity and mortality. Novel therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. The malignant behavior of this disease is influenced both by cell intrinsic factors and by the complex interactions of the tumor cells with its tumor microenvironment. Recent scientific and technological advancements allow increased ability to interrogate the microenvironment in terms of composition...

Multiple myeloma (MM) displays significant genetic heterogeneity, making it challenging to distinguish malignant from non-malignant plasma cells in single-cell datasets. Existing marker-based and CNV detection methods require manual intervention or high computational resources, limiting their scope. We developed a supervised deep learning autoencoder to classify malignant cells across MM and its precursor stages and validated its performance and biological relevance. The model outperformed...