Cell Line-Dependent Variability of Coordinate Expression of p75NTR and CRABP1 and Modulation of Effects of Fenretinide on Neuroblastoma Cells

Multi-omics revealed that ELAVL3 regulates MYCN in neuroblastoma via immunogenic cell death: Risk stratification and experimental research

Neuroblastoma (NB), a common and highly lethal malignant disease in pediatrics, still lacks an effective therapeutic approach that addresses all conditions. Immunogenic Cell Death (ICD) plays a crucial role in tumor cell death and triggers a potent anti-tumor immune response. In this study, we report an ICD-related index (ICDR-Index) in NB through various machine learning methodologies, utilizing bulk transcriptome data from 1244 NB samples and 16 scRNA-seq datasets. Our results showed that the ICDR-Index could accurately identify different risk subtypes of patients with NB and provide predictive value for prognosis. Importantly, we found that high-risk patients with NB exhibited significantly poor overall survival (OS) rates, adverse clinical phenotypes, poor immune cell infiltration, and low sensitivity to immunotherapy. Furthermore, we identified ELAVL3 as a key gene within the ICDR-Index, where high expression levels were associated with malignancy and poor OS in NB. Additionally, targeted silencing of ELAVL3 down-regulated MYCN gene expression and reduced the malignancy of NB cells. Notably, the si-ELAVL3-transfected NB cells enhanced the anti-tumor activity of NK cells. Collectively, this study offers avenues for predicting the risk stratification of patients with NB and reveals a potential mechanism by which ELAVL3 regulates NB cell death.

Using Chemistry to Target Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the neural crest almost exclusively seen in childhood. While children with single, small primary tumors are often cured with surgery alone, the 65% of children with neuroblastoma whose disease has metastasized have less than a 50% chance of surviving five years after diagnosis. Innovative pharmacological strategies are critically needed for these children. Efforts to identify novel targets that afford ablation of neuroblastoma with minimal toxicity to normal tissues are underway. Developing approaches to neuroblastoma include those that target the catecholamine transporter, ubiquitin E3 ligase, the ganglioside GD2, the retinoic acid receptor, the protein kinases ALK and Aurora, and protein arginine N-methyltransferases. Here, as examples of the use of chemistry to combat neuroblastoma, we describe targeting of the protein arginine N-methyltransferases and their role in prolonging the half-life of the neuroblastoma oncoprotein N-Myc, redox signaling in neuroblastoma, and developmentally regulated proteins expressed in primitive neuroblastoma cells but not in mature neural crest elements.