ZG16 regulates PD-L1 expression and promotes local immunity in colon cancer

CRC is a heterogeneous disease due to global molecular alterations, including mismatch-repair-deficient (dMMR) and microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H). Immunotherapy has achieved durable responses in a subset of patients with dMMR-MSI-H metastatic CRC. It has been showed that Loss of ZG16 is highly associated with colorectal cancer. However, whether ZG16 modulates tumor immunity in colorectal cancer is unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that the expression of ZG16 is associated with distant metastasis and lymphatic invasive in colorectal cancer. Besides, ZG16 is negatively correlated to PD-L1 expression in patient with CRC and overexpression of ZG16 blocks PD-L1 expression in colorectal cancer cells. In addition, overexpression of ZG16 promotes NK cells survival and proliferation, which is dependent on NKG2D expression. Our data demonstrate that ZG16 plays a role in modulation of immune response in colorectal cancer. The strong correlation between ZG16 and PD-L1 suggests that ZG16 may serve a biomarker to stratify patient who will benefit from immunotherapy.