PARK7/DJ-1 deficiency impairs microglial activation in response to LPS-induced inflammation.

BACKGROUND: Specific microglia responses are thought to contribute to the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the phenotypic acquisition of microglial cells and their role during the underlying neuroinflammatory processes remain largely elusive. Here, according to the multiple-hit hypothesis, which stipulates that PD etiology is determined by a combination of genetics and various environmental risk factors, we investigate microglial transcriptional programs and morphological adaptations under PARK7/DJ-1 deficiency, a genetic cause of PD, during lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation. METHODS: Using a combination of single-cell RNA-sequencing, bulk RNA-sequencing, multicolor flow cytometry and immunofluorescence analyses, we comprehensively compared microglial cell phenotypic characteristics in PARK7/DJ-1 knock-out (KO) with wildtype littermate mice following 6- or 24-h intraperitoneal injection with LPS. For translational perspectives, we conducted corresponding analyses in human PARK7/DJ-1 mutant induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived microglia and murine bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs). RESULTS: By excluding the contribution of other immune brain resident and peripheral cells, we show that microglia acutely isolated from PARK7/DJ-1 KO mice display a distinct phenotype, specially related to type II interferon and DNA damage response signaling, when compared with wildtype microglia, in response to LPS. We also detected discrete signatures in human PARK7/DJ-1 mutant iPSC-derived microglia and BMDMs from PARK7/DJ-1 KO mice. These specific transcriptional signatures were reflected at the morphological level, with microglia in LPS-treated PARK7/DJ-1 KO mice showing a less amoeboid cell shape compared to wildtype mice, both at 6 and 24 h after acute inflammation, as also observed in BMDMs. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our results show that, under inflammatory conditions, PARK7/DJ-1 deficiency skews microglia towards a distinct phenotype characterized by downregulation of genes involved in type II interferon signaling and a less prominent amoeboid morphology compared to wildtype microglia. These findings suggest that the underlying oxidative stress associated with the lack of PARK7/DJ-1 affects microglia neuroinflammatory responses, which may play a causative role in PD onset and progression.

AllergoOncology: Biomarkers and refined classification for research in the allergy and glioma nexus-A joint EAACI-EANO position paper.

Epidemiological studies have explored the relationship between allergic diseases and cancer risk or prognosis in AllergoOncology. Some studies suggest an inverse association, but uncertainties remain, including in IgE-mediated diseases and glioma. Allergic disease stems from a Th2-biased immune response to allergens in predisposed atopic individuals. Allergic disorders vary in phenotype, genotype and endotype, affecting their pathophysiology. Beyond clinical manifestation and commonly used clinical markers, there is ongoing research to identify novel biomarkers for allergy diagnosis, monitoring, severity assessment and treatment. Gliomas, the most common and diverse brain tumours, have in parallel undergone changes in classification over time, with specific molecular biomarkers defining glioma subtypes. Gliomas exhibit a complex tumour-immune interphase and distinct immune microenvironment features. Immunotherapy and targeted therapy hold promise for primary brain tumour treatment, but require more specific and effective approaches. Animal studies indicate allergic airway inflammation may delay glioma progression. This collaborative European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) and European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO) Position Paper summarizes recent advances and emerging biomarkers for refined allergy and adult-type diffuse glioma classification to inform future epidemiological and clinical studies. Future research is needed to enhance our understanding of immune-glioma interactions to ultimately improve patient prognosis and survival.

PARK7/DJ-1 in microglia: implications in Parkinson's disease and relevance as a therapeutic target.

Microglia are the immune effector cells of the brain playing critical roles in immune surveillance and neuroprotection in healthy conditions, while they can sustain neuroinflammatory and neurotoxic processes in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD). Although the precise triggers of PD remain obscure, causative genetic mutations, which aid in the identification of molecular pathways underlying the pathogenesis of idiopathic forms, represent 10% of the patients. Among the inherited forms, loss of function of PARK7, which encodes the protein DJ-1, results in autosomal recessive early-onset PD. Yet, although protection against oxidative stress is the most prominent task ascribed to DJ-1, the underlying mechanisms linking DJ-1 deficiency to the onset of PD are a current matter of investigation. This review provides an overview of the role of DJ-1 in neuroinflammation, with a special focus on its functions in microglia genetic programs and immunological traits. Furthermore, it discusses the relevance of targeting dysregulated pathways in microglia under DJ-1 deficiency and their importance as therapeutic targets in PD. Lastly, it addresses the prospect to consider DJ-1, detected in its oxidized form in idiopathic PD, as a biomarker and to take into account DJ-1-enhancing compounds as therapeutics dampening oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.

Allergic airway inflammation delays glioblastoma progression and reinvigorates systemic and local immunity in mice.

BACKGROUND: Numerous patient-based studies have highlighted the protective role of immunoglobulin E-mediated allergic diseases on glioblastoma (GBM) susceptibility and prognosis. However, the mechanisms behind this observation remain elusive. Our objective was to establish a preclinical model able to recapitulate this phenomenon and investigate the role of immunity underlying such protection. METHODS: An immunocompetent mouse model of allergic airway inflammation (AAI) was initiated before intracranial implantation of mouse GBM cells (GL261). RAG1-KO mice served to assess tumor growth in a model deficient for adaptive immunity. Tumor development was monitored by MRI. Microglia were isolated for functional analyses and RNA-sequencing. Peripheral as well as tumor-associated immune cells were characterized by flow cytometry. The impact of allergy-related microglial genes on patient survival was analyzed by Cox regression using publicly available datasets. RESULTS: We found that allergy establishment in mice delayed tumor engraftment in the brain and reduced tumor growth resulting in increased mouse survival. AAI induced a transcriptional reprogramming of microglia towards a pro-inflammatory-like state, uncovering a microglia gene signature, which correlated with limited local immunosuppression in glioma patients. AAI increased effector memory T-cells in the circulation as well as tumor-infiltrating CD4+ T-cells. The survival benefit conferred by AAI was lost in mice devoid of adaptive immunity. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrate that AAI limits both tumor take and progression in mice, providing a preclinical model to study the impact of allergy on GBM susceptibility and prognosis, respectively. We identify a potentiation of local and adaptive systemic immunity, suggesting a reciprocal crosstalk that orchestrates allergy-induced immune protection against GBM.

Aptamer-Based In Vivo Therapeutic Targeting of Glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive, infiltrative, and lethal brain tumor in humans. Despite the extensive advancement in the knowledge about tumor progression and treatment over the last few years, the prognosis of GBM is still very poor due to the difficulty of targeting drugs or anticancer molecules to GBM cells. The major challenge in improving GBM treatment implicates the development of a targeted drug delivery system, capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and specifically targeting GBM cells. Aptamers possess many characteristics that make them ideal novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of GBM. They are short single-stranded nucleic acids (RNA or ssDNA) able to bind to a molecular target with high affinity and specificity. Several GBM-targeting aptamers have been developed for imaging, tumor cell isolation from biopsies, and drug/anticancer molecule delivery to the tumor cells. Due to their properties (low immunogenicity, long stability, and toxicity), a large number of aptamers have been selected against GBM biomarkers and tested in GBM cell lines, while only a few of them have also been tested in in vivo models of GBM. Herein, we specifically focus on aptamers tested in GBM in vivo models that can be considered as new diagnostic and/or therapeutic tools for GBM patients' treatment.

Metformin impacts the differentiation of mouse bone marrow cells into macrophages affecting tumour immunity.

Background: Epidemiological studies suggest that metformin reduces the risk of developing several types of cancer, including gliomas, and improves the overall survival in cancer patients. Nevertheless, while the effect of metformin on cancer cells has been extensively studied, its impact on other components of the tumour microenvironment, such as macrophages, is less understood. Results: Metformin-treated mouse bone marrow cells differentiate into spindle-shaped macrophages exhibiting increased phagocytic activity and tumour cell cytotoxicity coupled with modulated expression of co-stimulatory molecules displaying reduced sensitivity to inflammatory cues compared with untreated cells. Transcriptional analyses of metformin-treated mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages show decreased expression levels of pro-tumour genes, including Tgfbi and Il1ß, related to enhanced mTOR/HIF1α signalling and metabolic rewiring towards glycolysis. Significance: Our study provides novel insights into the immunomodulatory properties of metformin in macrophages and its potential application in preventing tumour onset and in cancer immunotherapy.

Glioblastoma-instructed microglia transition to heterogeneous phenotypic states with phagocytic and dendritic cell-like features in patient tumors and patient-derived orthotopic xenografts.

BACKGROUND: A major contributing factor to glioblastoma (GBM) development and progression is its ability to evade the immune system by creating an immune-suppressive environment, where GBM-associated myeloid cells, including resident microglia and peripheral monocyte-derived macrophages, play critical pro-tumoral roles. However, it is unclear whether recruited myeloid cells are phenotypically and functionally identical in GBM patients and whether this heterogeneity is recapitulated in patient-derived orthotopic xenografts (PDOXs). A thorough understanding of the GBM ecosystem and its recapitulation in preclinical models is currently missing, leading to inaccurate results and failures of clinical trials. METHODS: Here, we report systematic characterization of the tumor microenvironment (TME) in GBM PDOXs and patient tumors at the single-cell and spatial levels. We applied single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, multicolor flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and functional studies to examine the heterogeneous TME instructed by GBM cells. GBM PDOXs representing different tumor phenotypes were compared to glioma mouse GL261 syngeneic model and patient tumors. RESULTS: We show that GBM tumor cells reciprocally interact with host cells to create a GBM patient-specific TME in PDOXs. We detected the most prominent transcriptomic adaptations in myeloid cells, with brain-resident microglia representing the main population in the cellular tumor, while peripheral-derived myeloid cells infiltrated the brain at sites of blood-brain barrier disruption. More specifically, we show that GBM-educated microglia undergo transition to diverse phenotypic states across distinct GBM landscapes and tumor niches. GBM-educated microglia subsets display phagocytic and dendritic cell-like gene expression programs. Additionally, we found novel microglial states expressing cell cycle programs, astrocytic or endothelial markers. Lastly, we show that temozolomide treatment leads to transcriptomic plasticity and altered crosstalk between GBM tumor cells and adjacent TME components. CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide novel insights into the phenotypic adaptation of the heterogeneous TME instructed by GBM tumors. We show the key role of microglial phenotypic states in supporting GBM tumor growth and response to treatment. Our data place PDOXs as relevant models to assess the functionality of the TME and changes in the GBM ecosystem upon treatment.

Glioblastoma-instructed microglia transition to heterogeneous phenotypic states with phagocytic and dendritic cell-like features in patient tumors and patient-derived orthotopic xenografts.

Background: A major contributing factor to glioblastoma (GBM) development and progression is its ability to evade the immune system by creating an immune-suppressive environment, where GBM-associated myeloid cells, including resident microglia and peripheral monocyte-derived macrophages, play critical pro-tumoral roles. However, it is unclear whether recruited myeloid cells are phenotypically and functionally identical in GBM patients and whether this heterogeneity is recapitulated in patient-derived orthotopic xenografts (PDOXs). A thorough understanding of the GBM ecosystem and its recapitulation in preclinical models is currently missing, leading to inaccurate results and failures of clinical trials. Methods: Here, we report systematic characterization of the tumor microenvironment (TME) in GBM PDOXs and patient tumors at the single-cell and spatial levels. We applied single-cell RNA-sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, multicolor flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry and functional studies to examine the heterogeneous TME instructed by GBM cells. GBM PDOXs representing different tumor phenotypes were compared to glioma mouse GL261 syngeneic model and patient tumors. Results: We show that GBM tumor cells reciprocally interact with host cells to create a GBM patient-specific TME in PDOXs. We detected the most prominent transcriptomic adaptations in myeloid cells, with brain-resident microglia representing the main population in the cellular tumor, while peripheral-derived myeloid cells infiltrated the brain at sites of blood-brain barrier disruption. More specifically, we show that GBM-educated microglia undergo transition to diverse phenotypic states across distinct GBM landscapes and tumor niches. GBM-educated microglia subsets display phagocytic and dendritic cell-like gene expression programs. Additionally, we found novel microglial states expressing cell cycle programs, astrocytic or endothelial markers. Lastly, we show that temozolomide treatment leads to transcriptomic plasticity and altered crosstalk between GBM tumor cells and adjacent TME components. Conclusions: Our data provide novel insights into the phenotypic adaptation of the heterogeneous TME instructed by GBM tumors. We show the key role of microglial phenotypic states in supporting GBM tumor growth and response to treatment. Our data place PDOXs as relevant models to assess the functionality of the TME and changes in the GBM ecosystem upon treatment.

Elucidating tumour-associated microglia/macrophage diversity along glioblastoma progression and under ACOD1 deficiency.

In glioblastoma (GBM), tumour-associated microglia/macrophages (TAMs) represent the major cell type of the stromal compartment and contribute to tumour immune escape mechanisms. Thus, targeting TAMs is emerging as a promising strategy for immunotherapy. However, TAM heterogeneity and metabolic adaptation along GBM progression represent critical features for the design of effective TAM-targeted therapies. Here, we comprehensively study the cellular and molecular changes of TAMs in the GL261 GBM mouse model, combining single-cell RNA-sequencing with flow cytometry and immunohistological analyses along GBM progression and in the absence of Acod1 (also known as Irg1), a key gene involved in the metabolic reprogramming of macrophages towards an anti-inflammatory phenotype. Similarly to patients, we identify distinct TAM profiles, mainly based on their ontogeny, that reiterate the idea that microglia- and macrophage-like cells show key transcriptional differences and dynamically adapt along GBM stages. Notably, we uncover decreased antigen-presenting cell features and immune reactivity in TAMs along tumour progression that are instead enhanced in Acod1-deficient mice. Overall, our results provide insight into TAM heterogeneity and highlight a novel role for Acod1 in TAM adaptation during GBM progression.

MicroRNA Editing Detection and Function: A Combined In Silico and Experimental Approach for the Identification and Validation of Putative Oncogenic Targets.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of ~22 nt noncoding RNAs playing essential roles in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, cell proliferation, and cell differentiation and are often found deregulated in several diseases including cancer.The A-to-I RNA editing, mediated by ADAR enzymes, is a diffuse post-transcriptional mechanism that converts the genetically coded adenosine (A) into inosine (I) at the RNA level. Among different RNA targets, the ADAR enzymes can also edit miRNA precursors. Specifically, a single nucleotide change (A/I) lying within the mature miRNA can alter the miRNA binding specificity and redirect the edited miRNA to a different mRNA target. In several cancer types a consistent deregulation of A-to-I RNA editing machinery also involves important miRNAs (either oncomiRs or tumor-suppressor miRNAs). Herein we describe a combined in silico and experimental approach for the detection of edited miRNAs and the identification and validation of their target genes potentially involved in cancer progression or invasion.