Patients with Multiple Myeloma Develop SOX2-Specific Autoantibodies after Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation
Figure 4
(a) Correlation analysis between the percentage of plasma cells found in the BM of MM patients with the corresponding SOX2-specific antibody titers. For some patients several samples from different time points were analyzed. No significant correlation was found between these two parameters (). (b) Treatment-dependent distribution of SOX2-positive samples and SOX2-positive patients. 92% (63 of 68) of all SOX2-antibody-positive samples were collected after alloSCT, while 4% (3 of 68) and 2.9% (2 of 68) were collected at time of diagnosis or after chemotherapy, respectively. 80% of SOX2-antibody-positive patients had received alloSCT as maximum treatment, while 13% (2 of 15) and 7% (1 of 15) were untreated or had received autoSCT, respectively. (c) Comparison between SOX2-specific antibody titers before and after alloSCT. Mean values of titers for the respective patient prior and after alloSCT are shown. From 12 SOX2-antibody-positive patients, pre-alloSCT samples were available for 10 patients. 9 of those patients were antibody negative prior to alloSCT and subsequently seroconverted. SOX2-specific antibody titers were significantly higher after alloSCT when compared to pre-alloSCT titers ().
