T-Cell Receptor Repertoire Characteristics Associated with Prognostic Significance in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma

Ju-Won Kim; Sewha Kim; So-Yun Yang; Je-Gun Joung; Sohyun Hwang

doi:10.3390/genes14040785

T-Cell Receptor Repertoire Characteristics Associated with Prognostic Significance in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma

Genes (Basel). 2023 Mar 24;14(4):785. doi: 10.3390/genes14040785.

Authors

Ju-Won Kim¹, Sewha Kim^{2

3}, So-Yun Yang¹, Je-Gun Joung^{1

4

5}, Sohyun Hwang^{1

2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Science, College of Life Science, CHA University, Seongnam 13488, Republic of Korea.
² Department of Pathology, CHA Bundang Medical Center, CHA University School of Medicine, Seongnam 13496, Republic of Korea.
³ Department of Pathology, Korea Medical Institute, Seoul 03173, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Institute for Biomedical Informatics, CHA University School of Medicine, Seongnam 13488, Republic of Korea.
⁵ CHA Future Medicine Research Institute, CHA Bundang Medical Center, Seongnam 13488, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

High-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) is a fatal gynecological malignancy. Somatic recombination occurring during T-cell receptor (TCR) development results in TCR diversity, and the TCR repertoire, thus produced, is associated with immune response. This study analyzed the difference in the TCR repertoire and their prognostic significance in 51 patients with HGSOC. The patient's clinical characteristics, gene expression pattern, TCR clonotypes, and degree of tumor-infiltrating leukocytes (TILs) were analyzed, and the patients were divided into groups depending on their recurrence pattern, tumor-infiltrating leukocyte (TIL) score, and homologous recombinant repair pathway deficiency (HRD)-associated mutations. The TCR repertoire was low in patients with recurrence and showed the expansion of eight TCR segments. Interestingly, a few genes correlated with the TCRs also showed a difference in expression according to the prognosis. Among them, seven genes were related to immune responses and KIAA1199 was up-regulated in ovarian cancer. Our study shows that the differences in the TCR repertoire in patients with ovarian cancer and their associated immune pathways could affect the prognosis of HGSOC.

Keywords: high-grade serous carcinoma; immune pathway; ovarian cancer; t-cell receptor.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Female
Humans
Mutation
Ovarian Neoplasms* / pathology
Prognosis
Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell

Substances

Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell

Grants and funding

This research was funded by Korea Health Technology R&D Project, grant number HI16C1559, through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) and by the Ministry of Education from the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (grant No. NRF-2019R1A6A1A03032888, NRF-2022R1F1A1071285 and NRF-2022R1A2C109179712).