Role of lysine-specific demethylase 1 in immunotherapy of gastric cancer: An update.

Gastric cancer (GC) ranks 3rd in incidence rate and mortality rate among malignant tumors in China, and the age-standardized five-year net survival rate of patients with GC was 35.9% from 2010 to 2014. The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME), which includes T cells, macrophages, natural killer (NK) cells and B cells, significantly affects tumor progression, immunosuppression and drug resistance in patients with GC. In recent years, immunotherapy has become the first-line or second-line treatment for GC. Lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1, also known as KDM1A) was the first identified human histone demethylase, and high expression of LSD1 in GC is closely related to the dysfunction of the above types of immune cells. Therefore, LSD1 inhibitors could regulate the cytotoxic effects of immune cells against tumor cells through a variety of mechanisms to control tumor progression. In this review, we discuss the effects of LSD1 inhibitors on immune cells in GC and propose LSD1 as a new potential target for immunotherapy in GC.