Dysregulation in nucleic acid-sensing pathway genes is associated with cancer patients' prognosis.

The innate immune system, the first line of defense against pathogens, is activated by nucleic acids from microbial invaders that are recognized by nucleic acid-sensing receptors. Recent evidence affirms the ability of these receptors to respond to nucleic acids released by damaged cancer cells. The innate immune system is also involved in cancer immunosurveillance, and could be modulated for devising effective antitumor therapies by targeting nucleic acid-sensing pathways. A systematic, comprehensive analysis of dysregulation in nucleic acid-sensing pathways in cancer is required to fully understand its role. Based on multidimensional data of The Cancer Genome Atlas pan-cancer cohort, we revealed that upregulation of cytosolic DNA-sensing genes like AIM2 and CGAS was common in tumor tissues. We used 15 genes in the nucleic acid-sensing pathway to cluster all tumor patients into 2 subgroups and found that the subgroup with higher expression of nucleic acid-sensing pathway genes was associated with poorer prognosis across cancer types. However, in homologous recombination deficient patients, the nucleic acid recognition activated subgroup was associated with better prognosis, which confirms the therapeutic effect of nucleic acid recognition. This study contributes to a better understanding of the functions and mechanisms of nucleic acid recognition in cancer, lays the foundation for new therapeutic strategies, and enlarges the scope of development of new drugs.