Liqing Tian | PubMed Health

PubMed2026

Targeting Regnase-1 in B7-H3-CAR T cells reprograms the tumor microenvironment and enhances antitumor efficacy for osteosarcoma.

The microenvironment in solid tumors represents an immunosuppressive therapeutic barrier to CAR T cell therapy, and it is currently unknown whether it can be reshaped by the deletion of negative regulators in CAR T cells. To address this knowledge gap, we evaluated the intrinsic and extrinsic effects of deleting the negative regulator Regnase-1 (Reg-1) in B7-H3-CAR T cells for the immunotherapy of osteosarcoma. Reg-1 knockout (KO) improved the antitumor activity of human and murine B7-H3-CAR T cells in vivo. In immune-competent models, Reg-1 KO also endowed murine B7-H3-CAR T cells with the ability to create a proinflammatory landscape characterized by an influx of interferon gamma (IFN-γ)-producing endogenous T cells and natural killer (NK) cells and a reduction of inhibitory myeloid cells, including M2-like macrophages. Thus, deleting Reg-1 has cell- and non-cell-autonomous benefits, nominating Reg-1 KO B7-H3-CAR T cells as a promising cell product for early-phase clinical testing in patients with solid tumors.

Animals↗

PubMed2025

The landscape of structural variation in pediatric cancer.

Structural variants (SVs) account for over 60% of the driver variants in pediatric cancer, and in many cases act as the cancer initiating event. To study SVs from a pan-cancer perspective, we analyzed 1,616 pediatric cancer genomes in 16 major cancer types of hematological malignancies (n = 908), brain tumors (n = 183), and solid tumors (n = 525) and compared their profiles to those of 2,203 adult cancers. The SV burden varied ~100-fold across pediatric cancer types and demonstrated an 8- to 16-fold reduction compared to adult brain and solid tumors but was comparable in pediatric versus adult hematological malignancies. Recurrent SV hotspots occurred uniquely in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemias (ALLs) in proximity to RAG-mediated recombination signal sequences (RSS) and disrupted multiple immune-related loci as well as 69 genes, which often involved cryptic RSS sites. By contrast, such hotspots affected only immune-related loci but not driver genes in adult lymphoid cancers. Eight SV signatures extracted from the cohort had varying distributions across cancer types, with clustered translocations reflecting templated insertions in osteosarcoma, and medium-sized deletions (10 kb to 1 Mb) enriched in cancers with RAG-mediated deletions. Intra-patient evolutionary analysis in 13 patients with multiple spatiotemporally distinct samples revealed that RAG-mediated recombination in leukemia and complex rearrangements in solid tumors occurred both early in disease initiation and continuously during later diversification, contributing to clonal heterogeneity. Finally, we found that both driver genes and fragile sites were the two genomic regions most frequently disrupted by SVs. The unique and diverse SV landscapes that emerged from this comprehensive analysis expand the scope of RSS-mediated mutagenesis in pediatric ALL and will be a valuable resource for guiding future functional studies and the design of clinical genomic testing in pediatric cancer.

Journal Article↗