The transcriptome landscape of the carcinogenic treatment response in the blind mole rat: insights into cancer resistance mechanisms.

BACKGROUND: Spalax, the blind mole rat, developed an extraordinary cancer resistance during 40 million years of evolution in a subterranean, hypoxic, thus DNA damaging, habitat. In 50 years of Spalax research, no spontaneous cancer development has been observed. The mechanisms underlying this resistance are still not clarified. We investigated the genetic difference between Spalax and mice that might enable the Spalax relative resistance to cancer development. We compared Spalax and mice responses to a treatment with the carcinogen 3-Methylcholantrene, as a model to assess Spalax' cancer-resistance. RESULTS: We compared RNA-Seq data of untreated Spalax to Spalax with a tumor and identified a high number of differentially expressed genes. We filtered these genes by their expression in tolerant Spalax that resisted the 3MCA, and in mice, and found 25 genes with a consistent expression pattern in the samples susceptible to cancer among species. Contrasting the expressed genes in Spalax with benign granulomas to those in Spalax with malignant fibrosarcomas elucidated significant differences in several pathways, mainly related to the extracellular matrix and the immune system. We found a central cluster of ECM genes that differ greatly between conditions. Further analysis of these genes revealed potential microRNA targets. We also found higher levels of gene expression of some DNA repair pathways in Spalax than in other murines, like the majority of Fanconi Anemia pathway. CONCLUSION: The comparison of the treated with the untreated tissue revealed a regulatory complex that might give an answer how Spalax is able to restrict the tumor growth. By remodeling the extracellular matrix, the possible growth is limited, and the proliferation of cancer cells was potentially prevented. We hypothesize that this regulatory cluster plays a major role in the cancer resistance of Spalax. Furthermore, we identified 25 additional candidate genes that showed a distinct expression pattern in untreated or tolerant Spalax compared to animals that developed a developed either a benign or malignant tumor. While further study is necessary, we believe that these genes may serve as candidate markers in cancer detection.

Hitting the caspofungin salvage pathway of human-pathogenic fungi with the novel lasso peptide humidimycin (MDN-0010).

Fungal infections have increased dramatically in the last 2 decades, and fighting infectious diseases requires innovative approaches such as the combination of two drugs acting on different targets or even targeting a salvage pathway of one of the drugs. The fungal cell wall biosynthesis is inhibited by the clinically used antifungal drug caspofungin. This antifungal activity has been found to be potentiated by humidimycin, a new natural product identified from the screening of a collection of 20,000 microbial extracts, which has no major effect when used alone. An analysis of transcriptomes and selected Aspergillus fumigatus mutants indicated that humidimycin affects the high osmolarity glycerol response pathway. By combining humidimycin and caspofungin, a strong increase in caspofungin efficacy was achieved, demonstrating that targeting different signaling pathways provides an excellent basis to develop novel anti-infective strategies.

Clinical Implications and Dynamics of Clonal Hematopoiesis in Anti-CD19 CAR T-cell Treated Patients.

Recent evidence revealed important interactions between clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and cellular therapies established for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. The impact of CH on safety, efficacy, and outcome of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is currently under investigation. We analyzed 110 patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (n = 105) or acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (n = 5), treated with Axicabtagene-Ciloleucel (39%), Tisagenlecleucel (51%), or Brexucabtagene autoleucel (10%). Using error-corrected targeted sequencing, a high CH prevalence of 56.4% (variant allele frequency [VAF] ≥1%) at the time of CAR T-cell infusion was detected. The most frequently mutated gene was PPM1D followed by DNMT3A, TET2, ASXL1, and TP53. Variant allele frequencies were significantly lower in B and T cells compared with monocytes and granulocytes. CH did not increase the risk of CAR T-related toxicities. The incidences of cytokine release syndrome and immune effector-cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome were similar between CHpos and CHneg patients, regardless of clone size, age, or CAR T product. Prolonged cytopenias were not associated with CH. Best overall response rates (ORRs) were numerically but not significantly higher in CHpos patients (ORR 76.7% versus 62.2%; P = 0.13). Furthermore, CH status did not predict progression-free survival or overall survival. Lastly, sequential analysis showed a modest VAF increase of 1.3% and acquisition of novel mutations within 100 days postinfusion. CH was frequent in large B-cell lymphoma/ALL patients receiving CAR T-cells but did not affect toxicity nor treatment response or outcome.

PDGFA-associated protein 1 protects mature B lymphocytes from stress-induced cell death and promotes antibody gene diversification.

The establishment of protective humoral immunity is dependent on the ability of mature B cells to undergo antibody gene diversification while adjusting to the physiological stressors induced by activation with the antigen. Mature B cells diversify their antibody genes by class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM), which are both dependent on efficient induction of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID). Here, we identified PDGFA-associated protein 1 (Pdap1) as an essential regulator of cellular homeostasis in mature B cells. Pdap1 deficiency leads to sustained expression of the integrated stress response (ISR) effector activating transcription factor 4 (Atf4) and induction of the ISR transcriptional program, increased cell death, and defective AID expression. As a consequence, loss of Pdap1 reduces germinal center B cell formation and impairs CSR and SHM. Thus, Pdap1 protects mature B cells against chronic ISR activation and ensures efficient antibody diversification by promoting their survival and optimal function.

Network Modeling Reveals Cross Talk of MAP Kinases during Adaptation to Caspofungin Stress in Aspergillus fumigatus.

Mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are highly conserved in eukaryotic organisms. In pathogenic fungi, their activities were assigned to different physiological functions including drug adaptation and resistance. Aspergillus fumigatus is a human pathogenic fungus, which causes life-threatening invasive infections. Therapeutic options against invasive mycoses are still limited. One of the clinically used drugs is caspofungin, which specifically targets the fungal cell wall biosynthesis. A systems biology approach, based on comprehensive transcriptome data sets and mathematical modeling, was employed to infer a regulatory network and identify key interactions during adaptation to caspofungin stress in A. fumigatus. Mathematical modeling and experimental validations confirmed an intimate cross talk occurring between the cell wall-integrity and the high osmolarity-glycerol signaling pathways. Specifically, increased concentrations of caspofungin promoted activation of these signalings. Moreover, caspofungin affected the intracellular transport, which caused an additional osmotic stress that is independent of glucan inhibition. High concentrations of caspofungin reduced this osmotic stress, and thus decreased its toxic activity. Our results demonstrated that MAPK signaling pathways play a key role during caspofungin adaptation and are contributing to the paradoxical effect exerted by this drug.

Genome-Wide Scale-Free Network Inference for Candida albicans.

Discovery of essential genes in pathogenic organisms is an important step in the development of new medication. Despite a growing number of genome data available, little is known about C. albicans, a major fungal pathogen. Most of the human population carries C. albicans as commensal, but it can cause systemic infection that may lead to the death of the host if the immune system has deteriorated. In many organisms central nodes in the interaction network (hubs) play a crucial role for information and energy transport. Knock-outs of such hubs often lead to lethal phenotypes making them interesting drug targets. To identify these central genes via topological analysis, we inferred gene regulatory networks that are sparse and scale-free. We collected information from various sources to complement the limited expression data available. We utilized a linear regression algorithm to infer genome-wide gene regulatory interaction networks. To evaluate the predictive power of our approach, we used an automated text-mining system that scanned full-text research papers for known interactions. With the help of the compendium of known interactions, we also optimize the influence of the prior knowledge and the sparseness of the model to achieve the best results. We compare the results of our approach with those of other state-of-the-art network inference methods and show that we outperform those methods. Finally we identify a number of hubs in the genome of the fungus and investigate their biological relevance.