Expression of immune-related genes in the normal colorectal mucosa and colorectal carcinoma samples from Lynch syndrome individuals

ABSTRACT: Colorectal carcinomas arising in the context of Lynch syndrome, the most common inherited cancer syndrome, typically show deficiency of the DNA MMR (mismatch repair) system. Lack of functional MMR leads to accumulation of frameshift mutations at micosatellites (microsatellite instability, MSI). High load of highly immunogenic tumor-specific frameshift neoantigens results in strong immune response against Lynch syndrome MSI cancers. Previous studies have shown systemic immune responses against frameshift neoantigens in Lynch syndrome carriers long before tumor manifestation. In the present study, we analyzed the immune profile of normal colorectal mucosa in Lynch syndrome carriers without current or previous cancer history and in Lynch syndrome colorectal cancer patients, as well as of Lynch syndrome colorectal carcinomas. The unsupervised cluster analysis of gene expression data revealed a sharp differentiation between normal mucosa from Lynch syndrome individuals with and without manifest cancer as well as between normal mucosa in general and Lynch syndrome cancer tissue. Deconvolution analysis for predicting the prevalence of immune cell population among the three groups revealed 10 out of 14 investigated populations to be significantly different between the three tissue types (FDR=10%). In contrast to normal mucosa samples, tumor tissue showed overrepresentation of immune-suppressive cell populations, such as regulatory T cells and neutrophils. Taken together with the quantitative T cell density analysis on the basis of immunohistochemical T cell stainings, our data show strong immune infiltration of the normal colorectal mucosa in Lynch syndrome individuals even in the absence of a manifest cancer.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE178516 | GEO | 2022/03/14

REPOSITORIES: GEO