Down‐regulation of Fatty Acid Transporter‐encoding Gene SLC27A3 Modulates Immuno‐response and Correlates with Poor Prognosis in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Fatty acid transporter 3 (FATP3, also named as SLC27A3) plays a critical role in brain development and monocyte‐macrophage differentiation. It has been reported that SLC27A3 were upregulated in CD16+ Dendritic‐like cells and CD4+ T memory cells. However, the prognostic significance and functional consequence of SLC27A3 downregulation remains unclear in human cancers. The aim of this study is to determine the prognostic values of SLC27A3. First, we searched public gene expression database and analyzed SLC27A3 protein expression by immunohistochemical staining on cancer tissue microarray samples. We showed that reduced levels of SLC27A3 were widely detected in tumors compared to normal tissues and reflect a poor clinical outcome in non‐small cell lung cancer and glioma, especially in lung adenocarcinoma. Furthermore, we verified the functional role of immune‐regulation of SLC27A3 in NSCLC cell lines. Since SLC27A3 expressed in T memory cells, we raised the hypothesis that SLC27A3‐expressed cancer cells may establish microenvironment that fit for T cells. Therefore, T cells will recruit to kill cancer cells in the nearby. In vitro T‐cell proliferation assay showed that SLC27A3 modulated the inhibition of T‐cell proliferation exerted by lung cancer cells. In conclusion, downregulation of SLC27A3 expression is an independent prognostic factor in lung adenocarcinoma patients and may play critical roles in the inhibition of immuno‐response in lung cancer. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .