Abstract 1201: Pervasive HLA disruption fuels cancer evolution
Authors: Puttick Clare , Jones Thomas P. , Leung Michelle , Pich Oriol , Cancino Felipe Galvez , Liu Jiali , Varas-Godoy Manuel , Rowan Andrew , Martinez-Ruiz Carlos , Bentham Robert , Dijkstra Krijn K. , Rosenthal Rachel , Kanu Nnennaya , Litchfield Kevin , Salgado Roberto , Moore David A. , Van Loo Peter , Jamal-Hanjani Mariam , Quezada Sergio A. , McGranahan Nicholas , Swanton Charles 
Published: March 2024

Disruption of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules has important implications for immune evasion and tumor evolution. However, although genomic loss of HLA is frequent in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and in some types of breast cancer, the extent and importance of transcriptomic disruption to HLA presentation, including transcript repression and alternative splicing (AS), remains unclear. To address this, we developed MHC Hammer, a tool to call HLA allele-specific mutations, loss of heterozygosity (LOH), transcriptional repression, and alternative splicing.

We first assessed HLA allelic expression and the prevalence of AS in normal tissue. Applying MHC Hammer to 510 normal lung samples and 407 normal breast samples from the Genotype-Tissue Expression cohort, we identified extensive heterogeneity in HLA allelic expression depending on both the allele and tissue type. In addition, HLA allelic AS, occurring in at least 20% of the allele transcripts, was observed in 19% of normal lung and 13% of normal breast samples.

Next, we applied MHC Hammer to 413 TRACERx NSCLCs and 743 TCGA breast tumours. While mutations were uncommon, HLA LOH was a frequent event, occurring in 32% of lung adenocarcinomas (LUAD) and 57% of lung squamous cell carcinomas (LUSC). We observed a similar rate of HLA LOH in estrogen receptor positive (ER+) and negative (ER-) tumors (ER+: 14%, ER-: 15%), while in triple negative breast tumours we observed a higher rate of LOH (31%). Due to the heterogeneity in HLA expression observed in the normal samples, to measure tumor specific HLA repression and alternative splicing, we restricted our analysis to tumours with WES, tumor and tumor-adjacent normal RNAseq data. This resulted in a cohort of 88 NSCLCs from the TRACERx study as well as 44 ER+ breast tumours from the TCGA cohort. 61% of LUAD, 75% of LUSC and 35% of ER+ tumours harbored class I HLA transcriptional repression that could not be explained by underlying genomic loss. 27% of LUAD, 7% of LUSC and 55% of ER+ breast tumor patients exhibited no HLA disruption. Tumor specific AS affecting HLA exons 2, 3 or 4, potentially disrupting HLA antigen presentation, was identified in 8% of LUADs, 11% of LUSC and 7% of ER+ breast tumours. Tumor specific AS of exon 5, yielding soluble HLA molecules without a transmembrane domain was identified in 20% of LUAD, 14% of LUSCs and 18% of ER+ breast tumours.

LUAD and LUSC tumor regions without HLA LOH or repression were enriched for somatic HLA AS events and alleles with somatic HLA AS had a higher neoantigen burden than those without. We found no relationship between survival and HLA expression or AS in the normal tissue. However, consistent with the importance of HLA dysfunction in tumor evolution, LUADs with low HLA expression in at least one tumor region were associated with shorter disease-free survival, HLA LOH was more common in LUAD’s that metastasized and HLA repression was enriched in LUSC primary regions seeding metastases.

Citation Format: Clare Puttick, Thomas P. Jones, Michelle Leung, Oriol Pich, Felipe Galvez Cancino, Jiali Liu, Manuel Varas-Godoy, Andrew Rowan, Carlos Martinez-Ruiz, Robert Bentham, Krijn K. Dijkstra, Rachel Rosenthal, Nnennaya Kanu, Kevin Litchfield, Roberto Salgado, David A. Moore, Peter Van Loo, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Sergio A. Quezada, Nicholas McGranahan, Charles Swanton. Pervasive HLA disruption fuels cancer evolution [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 1201.