RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Mitophagy plays essential role in the development and progression of colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the effect of mitophagy-related genes in CRC remains largely unknown. AIM: To develop a mitophagy-related gene signature to predict the survival, immune infiltration and chemotherapy response of CRC patients. METHODS: Non-negative matrix factorization was used to cluster CRC patients from Gene Expression Omnibus database (GSE39582, GSE17536, and GSE37892) based on mitophagy-related gene expression. The CIBERSORT method was applied for the evaluation of the relative infiltration levels of immune cell types. The performance signature in predicting chemotherapeutic sensitivity was generated using data from the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer database. RESULTS: Three clusters with different clinicopathological features and prognosis were identified. Higher enrichment of activated B cells and CD4+ T cells were observed in cluster III patients with the most favorable prognosis. Next, a risk model based on mitophagy-related genes was developed. Patients in training and validation sets were categorized into low-risk and high-risk subgroups. Low risk patients showed significantly better prognosis, higher enrichment of immune activating cells and greater response to chemotherapy (oxaliplatin, irinotecan, and 5-fluorouracil) compared to high-risk patients. Further experiments identified CXCL3 as novel regulator of cell proliferation and mitophagy. CONCLUSION: We revealed the biological roles of mitophagy-related genes in the immune infiltration, and its ability to predict patients' prognosis and response to chemotherapy in CRC. These interesting findings would provide new insight into the therapeutic management of CRC patients.
RESUMO
Hematological malignancies are increasingly treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Unfortunately, iron overload is a frequent adverse effect of allo-HSCT and is associated with poor prognosis. In the present study, we investigated hematopoiesis in iron-overloaded mice and elucidated the effects of iron overload on the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment. Iron-overloaded BALB/C mice were generated by injecting 20 mg/mL saccharated iron oxide intraperitoneally. Hematoxylin-eosin staining was performed to evaluate the effects of an iron overload in mice. BM cells obtained from C57BL/6 mice were transplanted into irradiated BALB/C mice (whole-body irradiation of 4 Gy, twice with a 4-hours interval) by tail vein injection. Two weeks after allo-HSCT, the hematopoietic reconstitution capacity was evaluated in recipients by colony-forming assays. Histopathological examinations showed brown-stained granular deposits, irregularly arranged lymphocytes in the liver tissues, and blue-stained blocks in the BM collected from mice received injections of high-dose saccharated iron oxide (20 mg/mL). Iron-overloaded mice showed more platelets, higher-hemoglobin (HGB) concentration, fewer granulocyte-macrophage colony-forming units (CFU-GM), erythrocyte colony-forming units (CFU-E), and mixed granulocyte/erythrocyte/monocyte/megakaryocyte colony-forming units (CFU-mix) than healthy mice. Iron-overloaded recipients presented with reduced erythrocytes and HGB concentration in peripheral blood, along with decreased marrow stroma cells, CFU-GM, CFU-E, and CFU-mix relative to healthy recipients. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that iron overload might alter the number of red blood cells after transplantation in mice by destroying the BM microenvironment, thereby affecting the recovery of BM hematopoietic function.