Transcriptome Related to Avoiding Immune Destruction in Nasopharyngeal Cancer in Indonesian Patients Using Next-Generation Sequencing

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to obtain the transcriptomes profile associated with avoiding immune destruction from nasopharyngeal cancer patients in Indonesia using next-generation sequencing. METHODS: The samples are divided into two types of samples; 1) biopsy of nasopharyngeal cancer tissue samples, 2) brushing tissue of people without nasopharyngeal cancer as control samples. The sequencing results were mapped (HISAT2) and quantified (HTSeq) for differential expression analysis using edgeR software. Transcripts data analyzed with Pantherdb and DAVID software to find genes related to the immune system and pathways related to immune destruction by cancer. RESULTS: The differential expression results show that 2,046 genes that have a significant differential expression. The 90 genes expression has down-regulated and 1,956 genes expression up-regulated, there are 20 genes related to the immune system. The 20 genes related to the immune system by analyzing lionproject.net that directly related to hallmark avoiding immune destruction that genes are CXCL9/10/11. The gene expression of CXCL9/10/11 regulates PD-L1 expressions via the Jak/STAT signaling pathway. The interaction between the extracellular domain PD-1 and PD-L1 in cancer cells have avoiding immune destruction. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the gene expression of CXCL9/10/11 have up-regulated is related to avoiding immune destruction that can use as an early detection biomarker of nasopharyngeal cancer in Indonesian patients.