Upregulated immune checkpoint HHLA2 in clear cell renal cell carcinoma: a novel prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongming Chen ◽  
Wei Chen ◽  
Yong Xu ◽  
Meng Zhu ◽  
Yi Xiao ◽  
...  

BackgroundClear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a malignant urogenital cancer with high mortality; however, current progress in understanding its molecular mechanism and predicting clinical treatment outcome is limited. Therefore, this study is to evaluate the clinical significance of immune inhibitory molecular human endogenous retrovirus-H long terminal repeat-associating protein 2 (HHLA2) in ccRCC prognosis and transcriptional regulatory network.MethodsExpression ofHHLA2in ccRCC was examined by an online database platform ONCOMINE. The ONCOMINE result was independently validated by qRT-PCR and immunohistochemistry. Kaplan-Meier survival was generated using IBM SPSS Statistics V.22. ccRCC tissues cells with high HHLA2 were sorted and subjected to microarray transcriptional profiling and analysis.ResultsIt was shown that expression of HHLA2 was statistically significantly increased in ccRCC tissues compared with normal renal tissues at both transcriptional and protein level. Moreover, the expression of HHLA2 was closely correlated with multiple clinicopathological features including tumour size, clinical stage and histological grade. High HHLA2 expression was associated with poor overall survival and clinical outcome. Comprehensive microarray analysis further identified thousands of HHLA2 targets including mRNA, long non-coding RNA and circular RNA that might function in various biological processes, especially, immune response.ConclusionIncreased HHLA2 expression was observed in ccRCC tumour tissue, which leads to a remarkable shorter overall survival and poorer prognosis. Together with other molecular evidence, we have demonstrated that HHLA2 could be a potential prognostic biomarker for ccRCC.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jazmine Arévalo ◽  
David Lorente ◽  
Enrique Trilla ◽  
María Teresa Salcedo ◽  
Juan Morote ◽  
...  

AbstractClear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most frequent and aggressive subtype of renal carcinoma. So far, the basis of its oncogenesis remains unclear resulting in a deficiency of usable and reliable biomarkers for its clinical management. Previously, we showed that nuclear expression of the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), phosphorylated at its serine 727 (pS727), was inversely proportional to the overall survival of ccRCC patients. Therefore, in the present study, we validated the value of pS727-STAT3 as a clinically relevant biomarker in ccRCC. This work is a retrospective study on 82 ccRCC patients treated with nephrectomy and followed-up for 10 years. Immunohistochemical expression of pS727-STAT3 was analyzed on a tissue microarray and nuclear and cytosolic levels were correlated with clinical outcome of patients. Our results showed that pS727-STAT3 levels, whether in the nucleus (p = 0.002; 95% CI 1.004–1.026) or the cytosol (p = 0.040; 95% CI 1.003–1.042), significantly correlate with patients’ survival in an independent-manner of clinicopathological features (Fuhrman grade, risk group, and tumor size). Moreover, we report that patients with high pS727-STAT3 levels who undergone adjuvant therapy exhibited a significant stabilization of the disease (~ 20 months), indicating that pS727-STAT3 can pinpoint a subset of patients susceptible to respond well to treatment. In summary, we demonstrated that high pS727-STAT3 levels (regardless of their cellular location) correlate with low overall survival of ccRCC patients, and we suggested the use of pS727-STAT3 as a prognostic biomarker to select patients for adjuvant treatment to increase their survival.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e297-e305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Thiery-Vuillemin ◽  
Tiphaine Cholley ◽  
Fabien Calcagno ◽  
Marion Hugues ◽  
Tristan Maurina ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 195 (4S) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyu Kim ◽  
Rishi Sekar ◽  
Michelle DiMarco ◽  
Dattatraya Patil ◽  
Adeboye Osunkoya ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Au ◽  
Emine Hatipoglu ◽  
Marc Robert de Massy ◽  
Kevin Litchfield ◽  
Andrew Rowan ◽  
...  

Antigen recognition and T-cell mediated cytotoxicity in clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) remains incompletely understood. To address this knowledge gap, we analysed 115 multiregion tumour samples collected from 15 treatment-naive patients pre- and post-nivolumab therapy, and at autopsy in three patients. We performed whole-exome sequencing, RNAseq, TCRseq, multiplex immunofluorescence and flow cytometry analyses and correlated with clinical response. We observed pre-treatment intratumoural TCR clonal expansions suggesting pre-existing immunity. Nivolumab maintained pre-treatment expanded, clustered TCR clones in responders, suggesting ongoing antigen-driven stimulation of T-cells. T-cells in responders were enriched for expanded TCF7+CD8+ T-cells and upregulated GZMK/B upon nivolumab-binding. By contrast, nivolumab promoted accumulation of new TCR clones in non-responders, replacing pre-treatment expanded clonotypes. In this dataset, mutational features did not correlate with response to nivolumab and human endogenous retrovirus expression correlated indirectly. Our data suggests that nivolumab potentiates clinical responses in ccRCC by binding pre-existing expanded CD8+ T-cells to enhance cytotoxicity.


BMC Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qianwei Xing ◽  
Tengyue Zeng ◽  
Shouyong Liu ◽  
Hong Cheng ◽  
Limin Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The role of glycolysis in tumorigenesis has received increasing attention and multiple glycolysis-related genes (GRGs) have been proven to be associated with tumor metastasis. Hence, we aimed to construct a prognostic signature based on GRGs for clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) and to explore its relationships with immune infiltration. Methods Clinical information and RNA-sequencing data of ccRCC were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and ArrayExpress datasets. Key GRGs were finally selected through univariate COX, LASSO and multivariate COX regression analyses. External and internal verifications were further carried out to verify our established signature. Results Finally, 10 GRGs including ANKZF1, CD44, CHST6, HS6ST2, IDUA, KIF20A, NDST3, PLOD2, VCAN, FBP1 were selected out and utilized to establish a novel signature. Compared with the low-risk group, ccRCC patients in high-risk groups showed a lower overall survival (OS) rate (P = 5.548Ee-13) and its AUCs based on our established signature were all above 0.70. Univariate/multivariate Cox regression analyses further proved that this signature could serve as an independent prognostic factor (all P < 0.05). Moreover, prognostic nomograms were also created to find out the associations between the established signature, clinical factors and OS for ccRCC in both the TCGA and ArrayExpress cohorts. All results remained consistent after external and internal verification. Besides, nine out of 21 tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) were highly related to high- and low- risk ccRCC patients stratified by our established signature. Conclusions A novel signature based on 10 prognostic GRGs was successfully established and verified externally and internally for predicting OS of ccRCC, helping clinicians better and more intuitively predict patients’ survival.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Qu ◽  
Jiajun Wang ◽  
Qi Bai ◽  
Yangyang Qi ◽  
Yifan Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Little is known about the associations between PAK1 and anti-tumor immunity in clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). This study aims to explore the prognostic value of PAK1 in ccRCC patients and investigated the molecular immune mechanism for its oncogenic role. Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 282 ccRCC patients undergoing nephrectomy between 2005 and 2007 in Zhongshan hospital. Immunohistochemistry evaluated PAK1, CCL22, FOXP3 and CD8 expression in clinical specimens. Fresh tumor tissues, para-tumor tissues and peripheral blood samples for RT-PCR, ELISA, flow cytometry analyses were collected from patients who underwent nephrectomy in Zhongshan Hospital from September 2017 to April 2018. We compared clinical outcomes by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression model. Bioinformatics analysis performed in TCGA KIRC cohort. Results: High PAK1 expression indicated poorer overall survival (OS) and recurrence free survival (RFS) (both p<0.001) in ccRCC patients. Multivariate analyses indicated PAK1 as an independent prognostic factor. In clinical samples, PAK1 clearly correlated with immunosuppressive microenvironment in ccRCC tissues. Significantly, PAK1 positively correlated with Tumor-infiltrating regulatory T lymphocytes (Tregs). Furthermore, IL-10+ and TGF-β+ tumor-infiltrating Tregs both increased in PAK1 high tumors. Additionally, CCL22 was highly secreted in PAK1 high tumors. After treated by IPA-3 (an PAK1 inhibitor), CCL22 secretion was clearly inhibited (p<0.001). Finally, we built a nomogram to predict overall survival for ccRCC patients with higher predictive accuracy. Conclusions: Increased PAK1 expression predicted dismal prognosis in ccRCC patients by inducing tumor immune escape. IL-10+ and TGF-β+ tumor-infiltrating Tregs recruited by CCL22 play dominant immunosuppressive roles in PAK1 high tumors.


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