Sleeping Beauty mutagenesis identifies BACH2 and other regulators of CD8+T cell exhaustion, persistence in vivo, and CAR-T function under tumor-associated chronic antigen stimulation
Genes that enhance T cell function represent promising targets for improving engineered T cell therapies for cancer. While extensive CRISPR knockout screens have identified key genes enhancing T cell persistence, employing Sleeping Beauty (SB) insertional mutagenesis, which induces both gain-(GOF) and loss-of-function (LOF) mutations via the generation of fusion transcripts with endogenous genes, may uncover additional critical factors that previous approaches have overlooked. We developed transgenic mice carrying Doxycycline (Dox)-inducible SB mutagenesis system (DiSBey) in primary T cells. Using DiSBey, we conducted screens for genetic alterations enhancing T cell persistence under chronic antigen exposure. Specifically, CD8 T cells from Dox-fed DiSBey mice were subjected to repeated anti-CD3 stimulation over 18 days to mimic chronic antigenic stimulation. We then identified SB transposon genomic insertion sites and corresponding fusion transcripts from the persistent DiSBey CD8 T cells using enhanced-specificity tagmentation sequencing (esTag-seq) and RNA-seq, respectively. Under chronic stimulation, SB-mutagenized CD8 T cells exhibited improved persistence and reduced terminal exhaustion phenotype. Across six independent screens, we identified 38 genes that were recurrently targeted by the SB transposon T2/Onc2 and differentially expressed under chronic anti-CD3 stimulation stress. Among these, T2/Onc2 insertions into Bach2 and Elmo1 were repeatedly found at the genomic level and were associated with altered nascent transcript expression. Bach2, known as a key regulator of T cell memory formation and resistance to chronic viral infection but less characterized in engineered T cells for cancer therapy, was found to enhance in vivo tumor persistence in the B16-Ova tumor model. We showed that ectopic Bach2 expression levels influence engineered T cell differentiation lineage. A Bach2low signature allowed differentiation into both KLRG1 and CD62L phenotypes, whereas Bach2high restricted differentiation predominantly to the CD62L subset. Finally, in human CART19-28{zeta} cells, BACH2 overexpression enhanced cytotoxicity and improved tumor control following chronic cancer stimulation. Controllable SB mutagenesis using DiSBey mice provides a novel platform for functional screening of genes that improve T cell therapeutic phenotypes. Our findings highlight a dose-dependent role of BACH2 in enhancing the function of engineered T cells under conditions of chronic antigenic stimulation.