PVR (CD155) Expression as a Potential Prognostic Marker in Multiple Myeloma

LARS1 is a Prognostic Biomarker and Exhibits a Correlation with Immune Infiltrates in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Purpose

To study the relationship between LARS1 expression and immune infiltration and prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Patients and Methods

The clinical characteristics together with LARS1 expression levels were obtained from the TCGA database. Immunohistochemistry confirmed LARS1 expression levels in paraneoplastic and tumor tissues. To investigate LARS1-related downstream molecules, a network of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the Gene Ontology (GO)/Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) were built. Furthermore, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to analyze the pathways associated with LARS1 expression, whereas Single-sample GSEA (ssGSEA) was applied to perform an association study between immune infiltration and LARS1 gene expression. The TISCH Database and the TISIDB database were used to compare the difference of LARS1 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma and immunomodulators.

Results

In comparison to that in normal tissues, the LARS1 expression level was elevated in tumor tissues. LARS1 expression exhibited substantial correlation with AFP, Histologic grade, pathologic stage, Residual tumor, and Vascular invasion in HCC. Higher LARS1 expression in HCC was linked to lower progression-free survival (PFS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and overall survival (OS). According to the GO/KEGG study, the important biological process (neutral lipid metabolic process), cellular component (triglyceride-rich plasma lipoprotein), molecular functions (lipase inhibitor activity), and KEGG pathway (cholesterol metabolism) could be a probable function mechanism in promoting HCC. Various pathways as per GSEA revealed that they were enriched in samples with elevated LARS1 expression. The expression level of LARS1 in malignant tumor cells after immunotherapy was significantly higher than that before immunotherapy. LARS1 was also remarkably linked to the infiltration level and the immunomodulators.

Conclusion

LARS1 can be used as a biomarker of HCC, which is associated to immune infiltration of HCC.

Targeting TIGIT for cancer immunotherapy: recent advances and future directions

As a newly identified checkpoint, T cell immunoreceptor with immunoglobulin and tyrosine-based inhibitory motif (ITIM) domain (TIGIT) is highly expressed on CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, natural killer (NK) cells, regulatory T cells (Tregs), and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). TIGIT has been associated with NK cell exhaustion in vivo and in individuals with various cancers. It not only modulates NK cell survival but also mediates T cell exhaustion. As the primary ligand of TIGIT in humans, CD155 may be the main target for immunotherapy due to its interaction with TIGIT. It has been found that the anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) treatment response in cancer immunotherapy is correlated with CD155 but not TIGIT. Anti-TIGIT alone and in combination with anti-PD-1 agents have been tested for cancer immunotherapy. Although two clinical studies on advanced lung cancer had positive results, the TIGIT-targeted antibody, tiragolumab, recently failed in two new trials. In this review, we highlight the current developments on TIGIT for cancer immunotherapy and discuss the characteristics and functions of TIGIT.

DNAM-1 chimeric receptor-engineered NK cells: a new frontier for CAR-NK cell-based immunotherapy

DNAM-1 is a major NK cell activating receptor and, together with NKG2D and NCRs, by binding specific ligands, strongly contributes to mediating the killing of tumor or virus-infected cells. DNAM-1 specifically recognizes PVR and Nectin-2 ligands that are expressed on some virus-infected cells and on a broad spectrum of tumor cells of both hematological and solid malignancies. So far, while NK cells engineered for different antigen chimeric receptors (CARs) or chimeric NKG2D receptor have been extensively tested in preclinical and clinical studies, the use of DNAM-1 chimeric receptor-engineered NK cells has been proposed only in our recent proof-of-concept study and deserves further development. The aim of this perspective study is to describe the rationale for using this novel tool as a new anti-cancer immunotherapy.