Establishment of immune prognostic signature and analysis of prospective molecular mechanisms in childhood osteosarcoma patients

Monocyte Chemotactic Proteins (MCP) in Colorectal Adenomas Are Differently Expressed at the Transcriptional and Protein Levels: Implications for Colorectal Cancer Prevention

The expression of monocyte chemotactic proteins (MCPs) in colorectal polyps and their suitability as targets for chemoprevention is unknown, although MCP expression and secretion can be modulated by non-steroidal inflammatory drugs. This study was designed to determine the expression patterns of MCP-1/CCL2, MCP-2/CCL8, and MCP-3/CCL7 at the protein (immunohistochemistry; n = 62) and transcriptional levels (RTqPCR; n = 173) in colorectal polyps with reference to the polyp malignancy potential. All chemokines were significantly upregulated in polyps at the protein level but downregulated at the transcriptional level by 1.4-(CCL2), 1.7-(CCL7), and 2.3-fold (CCL8). There was an inverse relation between the immunoreactivity toward chemokine proteins and the number of corresponding transcripts in polyps (CCL2 and CCL7) or in normal mucosa (CCL8). The downregulation of chemokine transcripts correlated with the presence of multiple polyps (CCL2 and CCL8), a larger polyp size (CCL2, CCL7, and CCL8), predominant villous growth patterns (CCL2, CCL7 and CCL8), and high-grade dysplasia (CCL2 and CCL8). In conclusion, MCP-1/CCL2, MCP-2/CCL8, and MCP-3/CCL7 chemokines are counter-regulated at the protein and transcriptional levels. Chemokine-directed chemopreventive strategies should therefore directly neutralize MCP proteins or target molecular pathways contributing to their enhanced translation or reduced degradation, rather than aiming at CCL2, CCL7 or CCL8 expression.

CCR4 is a prognostic biomarker and correlated with immune infiltrates in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Background

Increased evidence has indicated that the tumour microenvironment plays an essential in the development, treatment and prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC). Recent studies have indicated CC chemokine receptor 4 (CCR4) plays an essential role in tumor invasion and other adverse biological behavior. This study used data from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to explore the role of CCR4 in HNSC and its clinical significance.

Methods

The gene expression and clinical data of HNSC patients in the TCGA database were extracted. Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) was used to analyze the expression of CCR4 in tumor and non-tumor tissue. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to analyze the relationship between CCR4 expression and overall survival rate (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and progression-free interval (PFI) in HNSC. A logistic regression model was used to analyze the relationships between various clinical factors and CCR4 expression. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) was used to explore the potential role of CCR4 in HNSC. Additionally, we explored the relationship between CCR4 and immune infiltration.

Results

The expression of CCR4 in HNSC was not significantly different from that in normal tissue. The expression level of CCR4 in wild-type TP53 was higher than that in mutant TP53. Cox regression analysis showed the expression level of CCR4 was related to the patient's tumor grade and Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stage. CCR4 expression level is an independent prognostic factor. CCR4 is positively correlated with immune infiltration and immune checkpoints expression levels. The results of GSEA revealed that the high CCR4 expression group genes were enriched in allograft rejection, inflammatory response, IL-6/JAK/STAT3 signaling, interferon gamma response, and KRAS signaling up. Low CCR4 expression group genes were enriched in oxidative phosphorylation, MYC targets v1, DNA repair, reactive oxygen species pathway, and P53 pathway. Further, our study indicated CCR4 can also predict the prognosis of radiotherapy patients.

Conclusions

Our study found that CCR4 was a prognostic marker related to HNSC immune infiltration, and patients with high expression of CCR4 had a better prognosis.

A seven-gene signature and the C-C motif chemokine receptor family genes are the sarcoma-related immune genes

Cells of the tumor microenvironment exert a vital influence on sarcoma prognosis. This study aimed to analyze and identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to immunity and their significance as immune biomarkers for the accurate prediction of overall survival of patients with sarcoma. The Cancer Genome Atlas was adopted for obtaining sarcoma gene microarray and corresponding clinical information. ESTIMATE algorithm was used to calculate tumor immune microenvironment indices. Immune-associated DEGs were identified using the limma packages and were further analyzed using the ClusterProfiler package and STRING website. Based on the results of these analyses, we constructed a prognostic model. Furthermore, we assessed the prognosis prediction model through functional evaluation and analysis of GSE17674. The functional analysis revealed that the upregulated immune DEGs were related to immune-related aspects. Chemokine ligands/receptors and immune-related genes were found to be vital for sarcoma formation and progression. We established a prognostic signature of seven genes, which indicated that high-risk cases exhibit poor prognostic outcome. The prognostic signature constructed in this study can accurately predict the overall prognosis in patients with sarcoma. Moreover, the novel immune gene expression analysis may provide clinical guidance for predicting prognosis in patients with sarcoma.

A Deep Dive Into the Newest Avenues of Immunotherapy for Pediatric Osteosarcoma: A Systematic Review

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary bone cancer affecting children and young adults, most often occurring at the metaphysis of long bones. At present, treatment with combinations of surgery and chemotherapy for the localized OS has only brought minuscule improvements in prognosis. In comparison, the advanced, metastatic, or recurrent forms of OS are often non-responsive to chemotherapy, adding to the dire need to develop new and efficient therapies. The question of interest investigated in this systematic review is whether immunotherapy can play a meaningful role in improving the clinical outcomes of children with OS. This article aims to summarize the preclinical and clinical research conducted thus far on potential therapeutic avenues for pediatric OS using immunotherapy, including methods like checkpoint inhibition, adoptive cellular therapy with T-cells, chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T), and natural killer (NK) cells. It also highlights the influence of the innate and adaptive immune system on the tumor microenvironment, allowing for OS progression and metastasis. This systematic review contains 27 articles and analyses of multiple clinical trials employing immunotherapeutic drugs to 785 osteosarcoma participants and over 243 pediatric patients. The articles were obtained through PubMed, PubMed Central, and ClinicalTrials.gov and individually assessed for quality using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist and the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. The reviews reveal that immunotherapy's most significant impact on pediatric OS includes combining immune checkpoint blockers with traditional chemotherapy and surgery. However, due to the bimodal distribution of this aggressive malignancy, these studies cannot precisely estimate the overall effect and any potential life-threatening adverse events following therapy in children. Further research is required to fully assess the impact of these immunotherapies, including more extensive multinational clinical trials to focus on the pediatric population.