A Dual Face of APE1 in the Maintenance of Genetic Stability in Monocytes: An Overview of the Current Status and Future Perspectives

Genetic contribution between APE1 variants in polycystic ovarian syndrome

Introduction

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) has been identified as a gynecological, hormonal, and metabolic condition in women of reproductive age. Genetic studies can contribute to understand the pathogenesis of PCOS; which can be beneficial in early diagnosis and long-term management of the disease. Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) has been related in the literature to polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Aim

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of -656 T > G and 1349 T > G single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the APE1 gene in Saudi women with PCOS.

Methods

This study includes 100 PCOS women and 100 healthy controls were genotyped for -656 T > G and 1349 T > G SNPs using PCR-RFLP method. Serum sample was used for FBG and lipid profile tests. The obtained biochemical and genotypes data were entered into Excel and utilized for statistical analysis.

Results

Clinical data presented in Table 1 was used to calculate the t-tests between PCOS and control subjects and results indicate age, weight, BMI, TG, LDLC and PCOS family history was associated (p < 0.0001). Genotype and allele frequencies showed the negative association in -656 T > G SNP (GG vs TT: OR-1.15 (0.61-2.17); p = 0.65 and GG + TG vs TT: OR-1.17 (0.67-2.04); p = 0.57) and positive association in 1349 T > G SNP (GG vs TT: OR-3.52 (1.48-8.36); p = 0.003 and GG + TG vs TT: OR-2.84 (1.27-6.31); p = 0.008) in APE1 gene. Anova analysis was not associated with any one of the involved parameters (p > 0.05).

Conclusion

This study found that the 1349 T > G SNP was related with PCOS in Saudi women. However, the -656SNP had no favorable effect on the APE1 gene.

APE1/Ref-1 Role in Inflammation and Immune Response

Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1/redox effector factor 1 (APE1/Ref-1) is a multifunctional enzyme that is essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis. APE1 is the major apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease in the base excision repair pathway and acts as a redox-dependent regulator of several transcription factors, including NF-κB, AP-1, HIF-1α, and STAT3. These functions render APE1 vital to regulating cell signaling, senescence, and inflammatory pathways. In addition to regulating cytokine and chemokine expression through activation of redox sensitive transcription factors, APE1 participates in other critical processes in the immune response, including production of reactive oxygen species and class switch recombination. Furthermore, through participation in active chromatin demethylation, the repair function of APE1 also regulates transcription of some genes, including cytokines such as TNFα. The multiple functions of APE1 make it an essential regulator of the pathogenesis of several diseases, including cancer and neurological disorders. Therefore, APE1 inhibitors have therapeutic potential. APE1 is highly expressed in the central nervous system (CNS) and participates in tissue homeostasis, and its roles in neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases have been elucidated. This review discusses known roles of APE1 in innate and adaptive immunity, especially in the CNS, recent evidence of a role in the extracellular environment, and the therapeutic potential of APE1 inhibitors in infectious/immune diseases.

APE1 may influence CD4+ naïve T cells on recurrence free survival in early stage NSCLC

Background

It was demonstrated that multifunctional protein APE1 (Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1) is closely related to tumor immune microenvironment in a number of investigations, Meanwhile, the abundance of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) has been shown as a prognosis indicator in some researches. However, it remains unclear whether APE1 is involved in the process of TILs affecting the prognosis of patients. To this end, we investigated the associations between APE1 and TILs in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and explored whether APE1 would influence the associations of CD4⁺ T cells infiltration with the prognosis of patients.

Methods

Genome-wide expression datasets were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) public database under accession number GSE68465, GSE30219, GSE31210 and GSE50081. MCPcounter and CIBERSORT analysis was conducted to evaluate the abundance of TILs in 1006 NSCLC patients of GEO database. Spearman correlation tests were used to evaluate correlations between abundance of various TILs and APE1 expression. RFS (recurrence free survival) was estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method and the Cox proportional-hazards model. The expression level of APE1 and tumor-infiltrating CD4⁺ T cells was evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC).

Results

The results showed that the abundance of CD4⁺ naïve T cells was negatively associated with the APE1 expression. CD4⁺ naïve T cells infiltration was a favorable prognostic factor for RFS, however, there was no effect of CD4⁺ T cells infiltration on RFS in patients with high APE1 expression. Subsequently, it was further confirmed that CD4⁺ T cells infiltration was negatively associated with the APE1 expression level in 108 NSCLC tissue samples; high CD4⁺ T cells infiltration was associated with longer RFS in low APE1 expression group but not in APE1 high expression group.

Conclusion

These results suggested that APE1 may affect the relationship between CD4⁺ T cells infiltration and prognosis in NSCLC. This study provides new insights into predictors of outcome in patients with NSCLC, and suggests that combining immunotherapy and APE1-targeted therapy may be a promising treatment for NSCLC.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-021-07950-1.