Joel H L Tan, You Yi Hwang, Hui Xian Chin, Min Liu, Sue Yee Tan, Qingfeng Chen
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Preclinical models are often used for cancer studies and evaluation of novel therapeutics. The relevance of these models has vastly improved with mice bearing a human immune system, especially in the context of immunotherapy. Nonetheless, cancer is an age-related disease, and studies often overlook the effects of aging. Here we have established a humanized mouse model of human immune aging to investigate the role of this phenomenon on liver tumor dynamics.
Methods: Multiple organs and tissues (blood, thymus, lung, liver, spleen and bone marrow) were harvested from NOD-scid IL2rγ-/- (NIKO) mice reconstituted with human immune cells, over a period of 60 weeks post-birth, for immune profiling. Young and aging immune cells were compared for transcriptomic changes and functional differences. Effect of immune aging was investigated in a liver cancer humanized mouse model.
Results: Focusing on the T cell population, which is central to cancer immunosurveillance and immunotherapy, we showed that the proportion of naïve T cells declined while memory subsets and senescent-like cells increased with age. RNA-sequencing revealed that downregulated genes were related to immune responses and processes, and this was corroborated by reduced cytokine production in aging T cells. Finally, we showed faster liver tumor growth in aging than younger humanized mice, which could be attributed to specific pathways of aging T cell exhaustion.
Conclusion: Our work improves on existing humanized (immune) mouse model and highlights the importance of considering immune aging in liver cancer modeling.
期刊介绍:
Immunity & Ageing is a specialist open access journal that was first published in 2004. The journal focuses on the impact of ageing on immune systems, the influence of aged immune systems on organismal well-being and longevity, age-associated diseases with immune etiology, and potential immune interventions to increase health span. All articles published in Immunity & Ageing are indexed in the following databases: Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, CAS, Citebase, DOAJ, Embase, Google Scholar, Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, OAIster, PubMed, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index Expanded, SCImago, Scopus, SOCOLAR, and Zetoc.