TY - JOUR A1 - Gowda, Madhu A1 - Godder, Kamar A1 - Kmieciak, Maciej A1 - Worschech, Andrea A1 - Ascierto, Maria-Libera A1 - Wang, Ena A1 - Francesco M., Marincola A1 - Manjili, Masoud H. T1 - Distinct signatures of the immune responses in low risk versus high risk neuroblastoma JF - Journal of Translational Medicine N2 - Background: Over 90% of low risk (LR) neuroblastoma patients survive whereas less than 30% of high risk (HR) patients are long term survivors. Age (children younger than 18 months old) is associated with LR disease. Considering that adaptive immune system is well developed in older children, and that T cells were shown to be involved in tumor escape and progression of cancers, we sought to determine whether HR patients may tend to show a signature of adaptive immune responses compared to LR patients who tend to have diminished T-cell responses but an intact innate immune response. Methods: We performed microarray analysis of RNA extracted from the tumor specimens of HR and LR patients. Flow cytometry was performed to determine the cellular constituents in the blood while multiplex cytokine array was used to detect the cytokine profile in patients' sera. A HR tumor cell line, SK-N-SH, was also used for detecting the response to IL-1 beta, a cytokines which is involved in the innate immune responses. Results: Distinct patterns of gene expression were detected in HR and LR patients indicating an active T-cell response and a diminished adaptive immune response, respectively. A diminished adaptive immune response in LR patients was evident by higher levels of IL-10 in the sera. In addition, HR patients had lower levels of circulating myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) compared with a control LR patient. LR patients showed slightly higher levels of cytokines of the innate immune responses. Treatment of the HR tumor line with IL-1b induced expression of cytokines of the innate immune responses. Conclusions: This data suggests that adaptive immune responses may play an important role in the progression of HR disease whereas innate immune responses may be active in LR patients. KW - Neural precursor cells KW - Retinoic acid KW - Ifn-gamma KW - Progenitor cells KW - Breast-cancer KW - T-lymphocytes KW - IN-VIVO KW - Differentiation KW - Pathway KW - Activation KW - Neuroblastoma KW - innate immunity KW - adaptive immunity KW - prognostic biomarkers Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-135147 VL - 9 IS - 170 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Enjuanes, Anna A1 - Fernandez, Veronica A1 - Hernandez, Luis A1 - Navarro, Alba A1 - Bea, Silvia A1 - Pinyol, Magda A1 - Lopez-Guillermo, Armando A1 - Rosenwald, Andreas A1 - Ott, German A1 - Campo, Elias A1 - Jares, Pedro T1 - Identification of Methylated Genes Associated with Aggressive Clinicopathological Features in Mantle Cell Lymphoma JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Background: Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is genetically characterized by the t(11; 14)(q13; q32) translocation and a high number of secondary chromosomal alterations. The contribution of DNA methylation to MCL lymphomagenesis is not well known. We sought to identify epigenetically silenced genes in these tumours that might have clinical relevance. Methodology/Principal Findings: To identify potential methylated genes in MCL we initially investigated seven MCL cell lines treated with epigenetic drugs and gene expression microarray profiling. The methylation status of selected candidate genes was validated by a quantitative assay and subsequently analyzed in a series of primary MCL (n = 38). After pharmacological reversion we identified 252 potentially methylated genes. The methylation analysis of a subset of these genes (n = 25) in the MCL cell lines and normal B lymphocytes confirmed that 80% of them were methylated in the cell lines but not in normal lymphocytes. The subsequent analysis in primary MCL identified five genes (SOX9, HOXA9, AHR, NR2F2, and ROBO1) frequently methylated in these tumours. The gene methylation events tended to occur in the same primary neoplasms and correlated with higher proliferation, increased number of chromosomal abnormalities, and shorter survival of the patients. Conclusions: We have identified a set of genes whose methylation degree and gene expression levels correlate with aggressive clinicopathological features of MCL. Our findings also suggest that a subset of MCL might show a CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) that may influence the behaviour of the tumours. KW - Histone deacetylase inhibition KW - Genome wide analysis KW - Molecular pathogenesis KW - DNA hypermethylation KW - Breast-cancer KW - Lung-cancer KW - Promoter KW - Expression KW - Targets KW - Sox9 Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-140632 VL - 6 IS - 5 ER -