Back

A tailored in vivo CRISPR screen identifies BAP1 as a potent tumor suppressor of soft tissue sarcoma

Huang, J.; Liu, X.; Floyd, W.; Haugh, W.; Sun, Z.; Kasiewicz, M. J.; Wu, Y.; Piening, B.; Welle, J. T.; Rosales, W. K.; Rajamanickam, V.; Kim, S. Y.; Xu, E.; Luo, L.; Ma, Y.; Patel, R.; Zhang, Z.; Bernard, B.; Redmond, W. L.; Urba, W. J.; Bell, R. B.; Kirsch, D. G.

2025-12-05 cancer biology
10.64898/2025.12.01.691734 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) is one of the most common soft tissue sarcomas (STS) in adults. Despite decades of research, therapeutic advancements for STS, including UPS, have remained limited. The genetic complexity of UPS, characterized by the absence of recurrent driver oncogene mutations, has hindered the development of effective targeted therapies beyond conventional chemotherapy and immunotherapy. To address this challenge, we conducted a customized in vivo CRISPR/Cas9 screen in mice to systematically identify potential tumor suppressors involved in UPS development. Our screen revealed BRCA1-associated protein 1 (Bap1) as a potent tumor suppressor in STS. Using total RNA sequencing, multiplex immunohistochemistry, and flow cytometry, we found that Bap1-deficient mouse sarcomas exhibit significant immune suppression. Further analysis indicated that polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1) is essential for the survival of Bap1-deficient sarcomas. Treatment with volasertib, a Plk1 inhibitor, markedly inhibited tumor growth in both syngeneic and spontaneous mouse models of Bap1-loss sarcoma. In conclusion, our findings suggest that PLK1 inhibition, or combined with immunotherapy, may represent a promising targeted therapeutic strategy for tumors lacking BAP1.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.