Telomere maintenance mechanism subtype reveals different immune activity in vestibular schwannoma

The immortality of cancer cells relies on maintaining the length of telomeres, which prevents cellular senescence and enables unlimited replication. However, little is currently known about telomerase activity and the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) in vestibular schwannomas. In this study we aimed to elucidate the role that telomerase and ALTs play in vestibular schwannomas.

To address this gap, we conducted a study where we used the gene set variation analysis algorithm with bulk RNA-seq and single-cell RNA-seq to identify the characteristics of each group of patients with vestibular schwannomas, based on their telomere maintenance mechanism subtype.

Our findings suggest that patients with relatively high ALT-like groups have a better prognosis than those with relatively high telomerase groups. Specifically, we found that the high telomerase group had relatively higher antigen-presenting cell (APC) activity than the high ALT like group. At the single-cell level, microglia, neutrophils, and fibroblasts showed high telomerase activity and relatively high APC activity compared to other cell types. In addition, Schwann cells in the group with low ALT levels exhibited elevated immune activity at the single-cell level.

These results suggest that personalized drug therapy could be developed from the perspective of precision medicine for patients with relatively high telomerase activity and a high ALT-like group.