Gene Editing Center, School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China.
Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Nat Commun. 2021 Dec 1;12(1):7003. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27331-3.
Cancer cells acquire genetic heterogeneity to escape from immune surveillance during tumor evolution, but a systematic approach to distinguish driver from passenger mutations is lacking. Here we investigate the impact of different immune pressure on tumor clonal dynamics and immune evasion mechanism, by combining massive parallel sequencing of immune edited tumors and CRISPR library screens in syngeneic mouse tumor model and co-culture system. We find that the core microRNA (miRNA) biogenesis and targeting machinery maintains the sensitivity of cancer cells to PD-1-independent T cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Genetic inactivation of the machinery or re-introduction of ANKRD52 frequent patient mutations dampens the JAK-STAT-interferon-γ signaling and antigen presentation in cancer cells, largely by abolishing miR-155-targeted silencing of suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1). Expression of each miRNA machinery component strongly correlates with intratumoral T cell infiltration in nearly all human cancer types. Our data indicate that the evolutionarily conserved miRNA pathway can be exploited by cancer cells to escape from T cell-mediated elimination and immunotherapy.
癌细胞在肿瘤进化过程中获得遗传异质性以逃避免疫监视，但缺乏系统的方法来区分驱动突变和乘客突变。在这里，我们通过在同种小鼠肿瘤模型和共培养系统中结合免疫编辑肿瘤的大规模平行测序和 CRISPR 文库筛选，研究了不同免疫压力对肿瘤克隆动态和免疫逃逸机制的影响。我们发现核心 microRNA (miRNA) 生物发生和靶向机制保持了癌细胞对 PD-1 非依赖性 T 细胞介导的细胞毒性的敏感性。该机制的遗传失活或 ANKRD52 频繁患者突变的重新引入削弱了癌细胞中的 JAK-STAT-干扰素-γ信号和抗原呈递，主要是通过消除 miR-155 靶向沉默细胞因子信号转导抑制因子 1 (SOCS1)。几乎所有人类癌症类型中，每种 miRNA 机制成分的表达都与肿瘤内 T 细胞浸润强烈相关。我们的数据表明，进化保守的 miRNA 途径可被癌细胞利用，以逃避 T 细胞介导的消除和免疫治疗。
