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In recent years, immunotherapy has become a hot spot in the treatment of tumors. As an emerging treatment, it solves many problems in traditional cancer treatment and has now become the main method for cancer treatment. Although immunotherapy is promising, most patients do not respond to treatment or develop resistance. Therefore, in order to achieve a better therapeutic effect, combination therapy has emerged. The combination of immune checkpoint inhibition and epigenetic therapy is one such strategy. In this review, we summarize the current understanding of the key mechanisms of how epigenetic mechanisms affect cancer immune responses and reveal the key role of epigenetic processes in regulating immune cell function and mediating anti-tumor immunity. In addition, we highlight the outlook of combined epigenetic and immune regimens, particularly the combination of immune checkpoint blockade with epigenetic agents, to address the limitations of immunotherapy alone., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Liu, Ren, Weng, Xu, Li and Han.)

Background: Recently, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been demonstrated as essential roles in tumor immune microenvironments (TIME). Nevertheless, researches on the clinical significance of TIME-related lncRNAs are limited in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Methods: Single-cell RNA sequencing and bulk RNA sequencing data are integrated to identify TIME-related lncRNAs. A total of 1368 LUAD patients are enrolled from 6 independent datasets. An integrative machine learning framework is introduced to develop a TIME-related lncRNA signature (TRLS). Results: This study identified TIME-related lncRNAs from integrated analysis of single‑cell and bulk RNA sequencing data. According to these lncRNAs, a TIME-related lncRNA signature was developed and validated from an integrative procedure in six independent cohorts. TRLS exhibited a robust and reliable performance in predicting overall survival. Superior prediction performance barged TRLS to the forefront from comparison with general clinical features, molecular characters, and published signatures. Moreover, patients with low TRLS displayed abundant immune cell infiltration and active lipid metabolism, while patients with high TRLS harbored significant genomic alterations, high PD-L1 expression, and elevated DNA damage repair (DDR) relevance. Notably, subclass mapping analysis of nine immunotherapeutic cohorts demonstrated that patients with high TRLS were more sensitive to immunotherapy. Conclusions: This study developed a promising tool based on TIME-related lncRNAs, which might contribute to tailored treatment and prognosis management of LUAD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incidence and mortality of cancer are the major health issue worldwide. Apart from the treatments developed to date, the unsatisfactory therapeutic effects of cancers have not been addressed by broadening the toolbox. The advent of immunotherapy has ushered in a new era in the treatments of solid tumors, but remains limited and requires breaking adverse effects. Meanwhile, the development of advanced technologies can be further boosted by gene analysis and manipulation at the molecular level. The advent of cutting-edge genome editing technology, especially clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR-Cas9), has demonstrated its potential to break the limits of immunotherapy in cancers. In this review, the mechanism of CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome editing and a powerful CRISPR toolbox are introduced. Furthermore, we focus on reviewing the impact of CRISPR-induced double-strand breaks (DSBs) on cancer immunotherapy (knockout or knockin). Finally, we discuss the CRISPR-Cas9-based genome-wide screening for target identification, emphasis the potential of spatial CRISPR genomics, and present the comprehensive application and challenges in basic research, translational medicine and clinics of CRISPR-Cas9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colorectal cancer (CRC), a seriously threat that endangers public health, has a striking tendency to relapse and metastasize. Redox-related signaling pathways have recently been extensively studied in cancers. However, the study and potential role of redox in CRC remain unelucidated. We developed and validated a risk model for prognosis and recurrence prediction in CRC patients via identifying gene signatures driven by redox-related signaling pathways. The redox-driven prognostic signature (RDPS) was demonstrated to be an independent risk factor for patient survival (including OS and RFS) in four public cohorts and one clinical in-house cohort. Additionally, there was an intimate association between the risk score and tumor immune infiltration, with higher risk score accompanied with less immune cell infiltration. In this study, we used redox-related factors as an entry point, which may provide a broader perspective for prognosis prediction in CRC and have the potential to provide more promising evidence for immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]