Immunogenomics: A Negative Prostate Cancer Outcome Associated with TcR-γ/δ Recombinations

We developed a scripted algorithm, based on previous, earlier editions of the algorithm, to mine prostate cancer exome files for T-cell receptor (TcR) recombination reads: Reads representing TcR gene recombinations were identified in 497 prostate cancer exome files from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA). As has been reported for melanoma, co-detection of productive TcR-α and TcR-β recombination reads correlated with an RNA expression signature representing T-cell exhaustion, particularly with high RNA levels for PD-1 and PD-L1, in comparison to several different control sets of samples. Co-detection of TcR-α and TcR-β recombination reads also correlated with high level expression of genes representing antigen presenting functions, further supporting the conclusion that co-detection of TcR-α and TcR-β recombination reads represents an immunologically relevant microenvironment. Finally, detection of unproductive TcR-δ recombinations, and unproductive and productive TcR-γ recombinations, strongly correlated with, and may represent a convenient biomarker for a poor clinical outcome. These results underscore the value of the genomics-based assessment of unproductive TcR recombinations and raise questions about the impact of tumor microenvironment lymphocytes in the absence of antigenicity.