Long noncoding RNA INCA1 regulates tumor interferon signaling

Tumor interferon signaling regulates the expression of immunosuppressive molecules and promotes cancer immune evasion. Although the role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the regulation of gene expression is now emerging, their function in tumor interferon signaling remains unexplored. We have identified the interferon-? (IFN?)-stimulated non-coding RNA 1 (INCA1) as a novel lncRNA expressed form the PD-L1 locus. INCA1 is expressed in multiple tumor types and its levels increase after IFN? stimulation. In this study we performed transcriptome analysis (RNA-seq) of INCA1 knockdown cells and show that INCA1 regulates the expression of several interferon-stimulated genes. Overall, our findings reveal INCA1 as a critical component of the tumor interferon signaling. Overall design: Tumor cell lines stable expressing shRNA control or shRNA targeting INCA1 were stimulated with interferon gamma for 24 hours. RNA expression profiles were generated by RNA-seq, in triplicate, using Illumina NovaSeq6000.