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DFFB suppresses interferon to enable cancer persister cell regrowth

GSE196018 Homo sapiens (human) RNA-seq (gene expression) 35 samples Submitted 2025/04/10 Platform GPL24676
At a glance

RNA-seq (gene expression) · human · 35 samples

What it is
RNA-seq (gene expression)Gene activity measured by sequencing. The summary does not mention single-cell work, so this is most likely bulk: one average per sample, the usual starting point for comparing groups.
Organism
Homo sapiens (human)
Samples
35 samples: 9 conditions, mostly in triplicateGroups are read from the sample names, not from the paper. Check the list below.
Data you can get
A processed table (series matrix) and supplementary files from NCBI; the raw sequencing reads from ENA. Which of these hold counts depends on the study, so check the file list.
Paper
Antigenic cancer persister cells survive direct T cell attackbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
Summary (written by the submitters)
Oncogene targeted cancer therapies can provide deep responses but frequently suffer from acquired resistance. Therapeutic approaches to treat tumours which have acquired drug resistance are complicated by continual tumour evolution and multiple co-occurring resistance mechanisms. Rather than treating resistance after it emerges, it may possible to prevent it by inhibiting the adaptive processes which initiate resistance but these are poorly understood.
Read the full summary ↓
Here we report that residual cancer persister cells that survive oncogene targeted therapy are growth arrested by drug stress-induced intrinsic Type I interferon (IFN) signaling. To escape growth arrest, persister cells leverage apoptotic machinery to transcriptionally suppress interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs). Mechanistically, persister cells sublethally engage apoptotic caspases to activate DNA endonuclease DNA Fragmentation Factor B (DFFB, also known as Caspase-Activated DNase (CAD)) which induces DNA damage, mutagenesis, and stress response factor Activating Transcription Factor 3 (ATF3). ATF3 limits Activator Protein-1 (AP1)-mediated ISG expression sufficiently to allow persister cell regrowth. Persister cells deficient in DFFB or ATF3 exhibit high ISG expression and are consequently unable to regrow. Therefore, sublethal apoptotic stress paradoxically promotes regrowth of residual cancer cells that survive drug treatment.
Published in
Antigenic cancer persister cells survive direct T cell attack
Wang MX, Mauch BE, Williams AF et al. · bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2025 · PMID 40166148 · doi:10.1101/2025.03.14.643359
This dataset
Download · which file do I need?

Direct links to NCBI and ENA, no account and no request form. Pick by what you want to do: take the small processed table to look, the supplementary files to re-analyse, or the original raw data to start over.

1 · Just have a look

Processed table

The series matrix: one table of values per sample as the submitters processed it. The smallest download, and it opens in Excel or R. Start here to see what the data look like.

2 · Re-analyse it

Supplementary files

The count tables and other files the authors uploaded. Take only the samples you need, or the whole study as GSE196018_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

3 · Start from the raw reads

Raw sequencing reads

The original FASTQ files, straight from the sequencer, held at ENA. Large, and you align them yourself, so only choose this if you need to re-process the study from scratch.

What the files usually look like: For RNA-seq the counts are usually a table among the supplementary files (look for 'counts', 'expression', 'FPKM' or 'TPM' in the file name). The series matrix of a sequencing study is sometimes nearly empty.

Also filed as BioProject PRJNA802916 and SRA study SRP357961. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

Study design
9 conditions, mostly in triplicate
A375 WT untreated ×3 A375 WT persister ×3 A375 WT persister+AP1i ×3 DFFB KO untreated ×3 DFFB KO persister ×3 DFFB KO persister+AP1i ×3 ATF3 KO untreated ×3 ATF3 KO persister ×3 +9 more

Supports a between-group comparison across 27 samples.

How we read this: 9 replicated groups read from 35 sample titles; they account for 27 of them. These groups are guessed from the sample names, not taken from the paper, so check them against the sample list below before relying on them.

Samples in this study
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Metadata from NCBI GEO, cached and refreshed periodically — the NCBI page above is authoritative. Downloads link straight to NCBI/ENA; nothing is proxied through BioTransfer.