Abstract A010: Assay development to assess the efficiency and stability of candidate molecules for transcriptional gene silencing of FOXP3, using a human tumor-derived cell line
Authors: Fogagnolo Carolinne T , Mizobuti Daniela S , Bajgelman Marcio C 
Published: December 2023

Regulatory T cells play an important role to modulate the balance between immunotolerance and immunosurveillance. These cells have the property of inhibiting effector lymphocytes and may antagonize antitumor immunity. Regulatory T cells are originated in the thymus, or even converted from peripheral lymphocytes by factors produced in the tumor microenvironment. Clinical data suggests that regulatory T cell infiltration correlates with poor prognosis in the treatment of solid tumors. The FOXP3 transcription factor is considered a master key to control the phenotype of regulatory T cells. It was previously shown, that the ectopic expression of FOXP3 can induce an immunosuppressive phenotype in lymphocytes. In contrast, it has been observed that mutations in the FOXP3 gene can cause impaired immunosuppressive activity mediated by regulatory T cells, such as the autoimmunity syndrome known as IPEX. In this sense, the FOXP3 transcription factor may be an interesting target, looking for inactivation of the immunosuppressive phenotype of regulatory T cells, to potentiate antitumor response. In this work, we present an assay development to investigate the potential of transcriptional interference RNA candidates to silence FOXP3 expression. In contrast to post-transcriptional gene silencing method, which targets messenger RNA and depends on a constant supply or efficient turn-over of the inhibitory molecule, the transcriptional gene silencing targets the cellular DNA genome, inducing epigenetic changes that may control the target gene transcription. We employed the human MCF-7 tumor cell line, which has endogenous and constitutive expression of FOXP3 as a target model to test transcriptional gene silencing candidates. This cell line is transduced with lentiviral vectors harboring interfering RNA sequences driven to the FOXP3 promoter region. The RNA interference candidates are then evaluated for their ability to induce DNA methylation, by bisulfite method, and transcriptional gene silencing of FOXP3, by qPCR. We performed the screening of candidates for FOXP3 transcriptional silencing, in comparison to a post-transcriptional interference RNA control. The lentiviral transduced cells are easily expanded and allow a temporal analysis of target gene expression. In this model, we observed the possibility of finding transcriptional interference RNA candidates that exhibited high efficiency and stability, that may be used for research purposes, or even for the investigation of new therapeutic possibilities in immuno-oncology.

Citation Format: Carolinne T Fogagnolo, Daniela S Mizobuti, Marcio C Bajgelman. Assay development to assess the efficiency and stability of candidate molecules for transcriptional gene silencing of FOXP3, using a human tumor-derived cell line [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy; 2023 Oct 1-4; Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Immunol Res 2023;11(12 Suppl):Abstract nr A010.