Multi-omics characterization of productive HPV integration in cervical cancer.

Abstract

e17508 Background: Cervical cancer (CC), which is caused by high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV), remains a significant public health problem worldwide. HPV integration into the host genome is a critical aetiological event in cervical carcinogenesis and progression and it can be silent or actively transcribed that leads to production of viral-host fusion transcripts. We aim to study the characterization of silent and productive HPV integration in cervical cancer. Methods: Cervical cancer (CC), which is caused by high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV), remains a significant public health problem worldwide. HPV integration into the host genome is a critical aetiological event in cervical carcinogenesis and progression and it can be silent or actively transcribed that leads to production of viral-host fusion transcripts. We aim to study the characterization of silent and productive HPV integration in cervical cancer. Results: Virus capture sequencing revealed 762 virus-host DNA fusion breakpoints and only 142 (18.6%) were actively transcribed into fusion transcripts. The productive HPV integrations were nonrandom, with an increase in breakpoints in the HPV E1 region、 human introns and common fragile sites. They were associated with significant changes in host focal genome structure and gene transcription, but not in protein production in 40 kb region, and produced higher levels of E6 and E7 proteins detected by Western Blot. Clinical, transcriptional, proteomic, phosphoproteomic and single-cell data demonstrated that EMT, proliferation and extracellular matrix associated pathway were enriched in productive HPV integrated tumors and contributed to advanced clinical stage. Conclusions: We demonstrated that productive HPV integration is associated with higher E6/E7 proteins and enhanced tumor aggressiveness and immunoevasion in situ to advanced disease. This study improves our understanding of the effects of HPV fusion transcripts on the biology and pathophysiology of HPV-driven cervical cancer that has the potential to direct new prevention and therapeutic strategies