Causes of death in persons with haematological cancers include the index cancer, a new cancer or a seemingly unrelated cause such as cardio-vascular disease. These causes are complex and sometimes confounded. We analyzed trends in cause of death in 683,333 persons with an index haematological cancer diagnosed in 1975–2016 reported in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results dataset. Non-cancer deaths were described using standardized mortality ratios. The index cancer was the predominant cause of death amongst persons with plasma cell myeloma, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and acute myeloid leukaemia. Non-cancer death was the major cause of death in persons with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic myeloid leukaemia, mostly from cardio-vascular diseases. The greatest relative decrease in index-cancer deaths was amongst persons with Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic myeloid leukaemia and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, where the proportion of non-cancer deaths increased substantially. Changing distribution of causes of death across haematological cancers reflects substantial progress in some cancers and suggests strategies to improve the survival of persons with haematological cancers in the future.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is known to be caused by the virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), is characterized by pneumonia, cytokine storms, and lymphopenia. Patients with malignant tumors may be particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection and possibly more susceptible to severe complications due to immunosuppression. Recent studies have found that CD209 (DC-SIGN) might be a potential binding receptor for SARS-CoV-2 in addition to the well-known receptor ACE2. However, pan-cancer studies of CD209 remain unclear. In this study, we first comprehensively investigated the expression profiles of CD209 in malignancies in both pan-carcinomas and healthy tissues based on bioinformatic techniques. The CD209 expression declined dramatically in various cancer types infected by SARS-CoV-2. Remarkably, CD209 was linked with diverse immune checkpoint genes and infiltrating immune cells. These findings indicate that the elevation of CD209 among specific cancer patients may delineate a mechanism accounting for a higher vulnerability to infection by SARS-CoV-2, as well as giving rise to cytokine storms. Taken together, CD209 plays critical roles in both immunology and metabolism in various cancer types. Pharmacological inhibition of CD209 antigen (D-mannose), together with other anti-SARS-CoV-2 strategies, might provide beneficial therapeutic effects in specific cancer patients.

Adipocytes constitute a major component of the tumour microenvironment. Numerous studies have shown that adipocytes promote aggressiveness and invasion by stimulating cancer cells proliferation and modulating their metabolism. Herein, we reported that Notch3 promotes mouse 3T3‐L1 pre‐adipocytes differentiation by performing the integrative transcriptome and TMT‐based proteomic analyses. The results revealed that aminoacyl‐tRNA_biosynthesis pathway was significantly influenced with Nocth3 change during 3T3‐L1 pre‐adipocytes differentiation, and the expression of LARS in this pathway was positively correlated with Notch3. Published studies have shown that LARS is a sensor of leucine that regulates the mTOR pathway activity, and the latter involves in adipogenesis. We therefore supposed that Notch3 might promote 3T3‐L1 pre‐adipocytes differentiation by up‐regulating LARS expression and activating mTOR pathway. CHIP and luciferase activity assay uncovered that Notch3 could transcriptionally regulate the expression of LARS gene. Oil Red staining identified a positive correlation between Notch3 expression and adipocytic differentiation. The activation of mTOR pathway caused by Notch3 overexpression could be attenuated by knocking down LARS expression. Altogether, our study revealed that Notch3 promotes adipocytic differentiation of 3T3‐L1 pre‐adipocytes cells by up‐regulating LARS expression and activating the mTOR pathway, which might be an emerging target for obesity treatment.

Functional gene expression signatures (FGES) from pretreatment biopsy samples have been used to predict the responses of metastatic melanoma to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapies. However, there are no predictive FGE signatures from patients receiving treatment. Here, using the Elastic Net Regression (ENLR) algorithm, we analyzed transcriptomic and matching clinical data from a dataset of patients with metastatic melanoma treated with ICB therapies and produced an FGE signature for pretreatment (FGES-PRE) and on-treatment (FGES-ON). Both the FGES-PRE and FGES-ON signatures are validated in three independent datasets of metastatic melanoma as the validation set, achieving area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.44–0.81 and 0.82–0.83, respectively. Then, we combined all test samples and obtained AUCs of 0.71 and 0.82 for the FGES-PRE and FGES-ON signatures, respectively. The FGES-ON signatures had a higher predictive value for prognosis than the FGES-PRE signatures. The FGES-PRE and FGES-ON signatures were divided into high- and low-risk scores using the signature score mean value. Patients with a high FGE signature score had better survival outcomes than those with low scores. Overall, we determined that the FGES-ON signature is an effective biomarker for metastatic melanoma patients receiving ICB therapy. This work would provide an important theoretical basis for applying FGE signatures derived from on-treatment tumor samples to predict patients’ therapeutic response to ICB therapies.

Our previous study found that Notch3 knockout mice exhibit defects in mammary gland development. To elucidate the underlying mechanism, tissue samples were subjected to RNA-seq, GO, and KEGG enrichment analyses and qRT-PCR validation. Of enriched pathways, chemokine signaling pathway and cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction were noticed in both Notch3^wt/wt/Notch3^wt/– and Notch3^wt/wt/Notch3^–/– mice, in which the expression of chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2) was sharply reduced in Notch3^wt/– and Notch3^–/– mammary gland tissues. The Mouse ENCODE transcriptome data reveal that the mammary gland fat pad exhibits a high CCL2, CCR2, and CCR4 expression, indicating that these molecules play important roles during mammary gland development. Specifically, defective mammary glands in Notch3 knockout mice could be partially rescued by CCL2 overexpression lentivirus through intraductal injection. An in vitro study showed that CCL2 overexpression promoted the proliferation, migration, and cancerous acinar formation of 4T1 cells, which could rescue the defective migration of 4T1 cells caused by Notch3 knockdown. We also found that Notch3 transcriptionally regulated the expression of CCL2 in a classical pattern. Our findings illustrated that Notch3-regulating CCL2/CCR4 axis should be an important signaling pathway for mammary gland development and should be a candidate target for breast cancer therapy.

Multiple myeloma (MM) often occurs in middle-aged, elderly and obese patients with ectopic accumulation of fat cells in the bone marrow. Bone marrow adipocytes (BMAs) display unique immunomodulatory properties instead of simply providing energy substrates, which can cause distinct change of bone marrow microenvironment. Although BMA accounts for 70% of the total volume of bone marrow, the mechanism on how BMA affects tumor progression remains elusive. This study aims to explore the pathogenesis of BMA in promoting myeloma and new potential treatment strategies targeting bone marrow microenvironment. Newly diagnosed MM patients in our cancer center and their relative healthy controls are recruited. A significant increase of BMA quantity in multiple myeloma patients was observed. Moreover, analysis of transcriptome sequencing data of BMA derived from MM patients demonstrated a distinctive gene expression profiles (Fig A). It worth to note that, expression of fatty acid-binding protein 4 (FABP4, also known as A-FABP or aP2), a member of the FABP family abundantly expressed in adipocytes, functions as a lipid-binding chaperone that regulates trafficking and cellular signaling of fatty acids, and plays an important role in linking lipid metabolism with immunity and inflammation, was increased significantly in BMA of MM patients (Fig B). To further explore the role of FABP4 in pathogenesis in MM, FABP4 knockout (KO) mice and their wide-type (WT) littermates were adopted, and fed with standard chow (STC) or high-fat diet (HFD, 45 kcal % Fat, D12451). FABP4 deficiency significantly attenuated the tumor burden and MM-related osteolytic lesions in mice fed with HFD (Fig C-D). Moreover, levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNFα, IL-6, RANKL and DPP4 were significantly reduced in FABP4 deficient adipocytes (Fig E). Flow cytometry analysis showed that the infiltration and pro-inflammatory polarization (M1/M2) of macrophages (MΦ) decreased significantly in FABP4 KO bone marrow (Fig F). In addition, FABP4 promoted the infiltration of Th1 and Th17 cells, while impaired the recruitment of Th2 and Treg cells (Fig G). Furthermore, administration of exogenous FABP4 recombinant protein significantly increased the fatty acid uptake and oxygen consumption of myeloma cells (Fig H). In contrast, pharmacological inhibition of FABP4 with BMS309403 alleviated the invasion and metastasis of MM in mice fed with HFD (Fig I-J). In summary, BMA increased in MM patients, reshapes the metabolism and immunity in bone marrow microenvironment through regulating FABP4 functions. FABP4 enhanced the energy and lipid metabolism of myeloma cells, and manipulated the bone marrow microenvironment to pro-tumor environment, therefore promoted the proliferation and migration of myeloma cells. This study will not only clarify the critical role of BMA in MM pathogenesis, but also provide therapeutic potential of FABP4 selective inhibitor BMS309403 for multiple myeloma treatment, especially for obese MM patients.