Not just a protein machine: how ribosomes regulate immune response

Leiden Repository (Leiden University)

Abstract

Ribosome specialization is an emerging field, and we slowly begin to grasp its impact on basic biological processes. While the common belief has been that ribosomes are passive mRNA-translating machines, recent literature has clearly demonstrated that this is not the case. This thesis summarizes the many flavors of ribosome specialization in cancer, and gives a detailed overview of the specific ribosomal proteins (RPs) involved in each process. Also, we uncover the differential roles RPs play in immune response against tumors, and how they work mechanistically. We found that changes to the ribosome regulate antigen presentation on tumor cells, which has a direct impact on the visibility of these tumor cells to our immune system. Together, the data presented in this thesis open many possible research directions and in the big picture, may yield a novel class of therapeutic strategies to overcome immunotherapy resistance, and to treat tumors using previously unknown strategies.

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