MYC Amplification Tied to Lower Immunity in Prostate Cancer

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A new study published in Oncoscience has found that MYC amplification in prostate tumors is associated with reduced tumor immunogenicity, as measured by lower recovery of adaptive immune receptor (IR) recombination reads from sequencing data. The researchers also found that MYC amplification is more common in metastatic prostate cancer and linked to worse progression-free survival.

Why it matters

The findings suggest that MYC status could be an important biomarker for prognosis and predicting response to immunotherapy in metastatic prostate cancer. The reduced immunogenicity of MYC-amplified tumors indicates strategies to restore T-cell or B-cell function may be needed to re-sensitize these tumors to immune checkpoint blockade.

The details

The study, led by researchers at the University of South Florida and Moffitt Cancer Center, analyzed TCGA-PRAD and multiple metastatic prostate cancer datasets. They found that MYC copy-number amplification was more frequent in metastatic disease and associated with worse progression-free survival. Importantly, MYC-amplified metastatic tumors yielded significantly fewer recovered adaptive IR recombination reads and showed reduced expression of immune-marker gene sets, consistent with reduced tumor immunogenicity - with the reduction most pronounced for B-cell-related reads.

• The study was published on February 7, 2026 in Volume 13 of Oncoscience.

What’s next

The authors stress that confirmatory immune-repertoire measurements (such as PCR-based assays) and prospective clinical sampling will strengthen the conclusions of this study.