New epigenetic regulators of T cell exhaustion

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Belk et al. perform an in vitro CRISPR screen to identify genes that regulate CD8(+) T cell exhaustion. They find several genes related to epigenetic modification and show that by eliminating Arid1a, CD8(+) T cells retain proliferative and cytotoxic function in vivo, leading to better anti-tumor activity.

Automated summary

In this article, Belk et al. conducted an in vitro CRISPR screen to identify genes that regulate CD8(+) T cell exhaustion. They discovered several genes related to epigenetic modification and demonstrated that eliminating Arid1a enables CD8(+) T cells to retain their proliferative and cytotoxic function in vivo, resulting in improved anti-tumor activity.