Project description:Treatment with immunotherapy, particularly immune checkpoint blockade, can lead to benefit in the clinical setting. However, many preclinical and clinical studies suggest that resistance to anti-PD1 treatment frequently occurs, resulting in tumor relapse and treatment failure in cancer including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. In this study ,10 HCC patients were treated with anti-PD1, and the biopsy samples before treatment were used for 289 nanostring panel RNA sequencing to compare responding and non-responding tumors to find possible pretreatment biomarkers or targets of the anti-PD1 therapy response
Project description:Transcriptomic predictors of response to anti-PD1 are unknown in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Here, we performed genomic profiling of tumor samples from patients treated with anti-PD1 in either front- or 2nd/3rd line.
Project description:Immune checkpoint inhibitors elicit durable antitumor effects in multiple cancers, yet not all patients respond. Here, we aimed to develop and validate a molecular classification of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients based on 42 fatty acid degradation genes and demonstrate its predictive ability in the clinical response of anti-PD1 therapy in HCC patients. We studied global mRNA expression profiles from 41 primary tumor tissues and 25 nontumor tissues derived from 41 HCC patients. 17 patients received anti-PD1 therapy and were available with clinical response. 63 samples were also sent for lipidomics analysis. Methods for the study included gene expression analysis, consensus clustering analysis, pathway enrichment analysis, and Single-Sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (ssGSEA). This study identified and validated a novel molecular classification based on fatty acid degradation that predicts clinical response to anti-PD-1 therapy in hepatocellular carcinoma.
Project description:In this comprehensive study, the authors have developed concise models integrating clinical, genomic and transcriptomic features to predict intrinsic resistance to anti-PD1 Immune Checkpoint Blockade (ICB) treatment in individual tumors. It's important to note that their validation was performed in smaller, independent cohorts, constrained by data availability. The authors have developed two Logistic Regression based models for Ipilimumab treated and Ipilimumab naive patients with metastatic melanoma. The main predictive features for the Ipilimumab treated patients are MHC-II HLA, LDH at treatment initiation and the presence of lymph node metastases (LN met), chosen using forward selection methodology. The main predictive features for the Ipilimumab naive patients are tumor heterogeneity, tumor ploidy and tumor purity, chosen using forward selection methodology.
Please note that in these models, the output ‘1’ means progressive disease (PD) and ‘0’ means non-PD. The original GitHub repository can be accessed at https://github.com/vanallenlab/schadendorf-pd1
Project description:Despite remarkable achievements, majority of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients fail to respond to anti-PD1 therapy. Here, we showed that ZFP64 was frequently upregulated in HCC tissues of anti-PD1 resistance patients. Elevated ZFP64 levels triggered tumor progression and induced an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Mechanistically, ZFP64 transcriptionally activated colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF1) by directly binding to its promoter, and secreted CSF1 driving the shift of macrophages into an alternatively activated phenotype. Importantly, the PKCα was revealed to phosphorylate ZFP64 at S226, resulting in its nuclear translocation to transcribe the CSF1 gene. Particularly, we proposed firstly that the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis was a critical pathway in fostering immune evasion and anti-PD1 tolerance and inhibiting this axis with lenvatinib or Gö6976 surmounted the anti-PD1 resistance in HCC. Our study indicates that the ZFP64 is an emerging indicator in predicting anti-PD1 efficacy, and reveals the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis is a suitable target for anti-PD1 combination therapy in HCC.
Project description:Despite remarkable achievements, majority of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients fail to respond to anti-PD1 therapy. Here, we showed that ZFP64 was frequently upregulated in HCC tissues of anti-PD1 resistance patients. Elevated ZFP64 levels triggered tumor progression and induced an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Mechanistically, ZFP64 transcriptionally activated colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF1) by directly binding to its promoter, and secreted CSF1 driving the shift of macrophages into an alternatively activated phenotype. Importantly, the PKCα was revealed to phosphorylate ZFP64 at S226, resulting in its nuclear translocation to transcribe the CSF1 gene. Particularly, we proposed firstly that the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis was a critical pathway in fostering immune evasion and anti-PD1 tolerance and inhibiting this axis with lenvatinib or Gö6976 surmounted the anti-PD1 resistance in HCC. Our study indicates that the ZFP64 is an emerging indicator in predicting anti-PD1 efficacy, and reveals the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis is a suitable target for anti-PD1 combination therapy in HCC.
Project description:Despite remarkable achievements, majority of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients fail to respond to anti-PD1 therapy. Here, we showed that ZFP64 was frequently upregulated in HCC tissues of anti-PD1 resistance patients. Elevated ZFP64 levels triggered tumor progression and induced an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Mechanistically, ZFP64 transcriptionally activated colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF1) by directly binding to its promoter, and secreted CSF1 driving the shift of macrophages into an alternatively activated phenotype. Importantly, the PKCα was revealed to phosphorylate ZFP64 at S226, resulting in its nuclear translocation to transcribe the CSF1 gene. Particularly, we proposed firstly that the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis was a critical pathway in fostering immune evasion and anti-PD1 tolerance and inhibiting this axis with lenvatinib or Gö6976 surmounted the anti-PD1 resistance in HCC. Our study indicates that the ZFP64 is an emerging indicator in predicting anti-PD1 efficacy, and reveals the PKCα/ZFP64/CSF1 axis is a suitable target for anti-PD1 combination therapy in HCC.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling by bulk RNA sequencing of murine livers or sorted immune cells, from DEN ALIOS NASH-HCC mouse model. Mice treated with CXCR2i (AZD5069) monotherapy, anti-PD1 monotherapy, or combination CXCR2i, anti-PD1 treatment. Published in doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2021-326259
Project description:Background & Aims: Immune checkpoint inhibitors combined with anti-angiogenic agents produces benefits in the treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We investigated the efficacy and immunomodulatory activity of cabozantinib alone and combined with anti-PD1 in experimental models of HCC, and explored the potential target population that might benefit from this combination. Approach & Results: C57BL/6J mice bearing subcutaneous Hepa1-6 or Hep53.4 tumours received cabozantinib, anti-PD1, their combination or placebo. Tumour and blood samples were analysed by flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, transcriptome and cytokine profiling. Cabozantinib-related effects were validated in a colorectal cancer PDX model. Transcriptomic data from three human HCC cohorts (Cohort 1: n=167, Cohort 2: n=57, TCGA: n=319) were used to cluster patients according to neutrophil features, and assess their impact on survival. The combination of cabozantinib and anti-PD1 showed increased anti-tumour efficacy compared to monotherapy and placebo (P<0.05). Cabozantinib alone significantly increased neutrophil infiltration and reduced CD8+PD1+ T cell proportions in the tumour, while the combination with anti-PD1 further stimulated both effects and significantly decreased T regulatory cell infiltration (all P<0.05). In blood, cabozantinib and especially combination increased the proportions of overall T cells (P<0.01) and memory/effector T cells (P<0.05), while lowering the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (P<0.001 for combination). Unsupervised clustering of human HCCs revealed that high tumour enrichment in neutrophil features observed with the treatment combination was linked to less proliferative phenotypes, and well-differentiated HCC with better prognosis. Neutrophil recruitment in both humans and mice was linked to CXCR2 ligands and CXCL12 (P<0.05). Conclusions: Cabozantinib in combination with anti-PD1 enhanced anti-tumour immunity by bringing together innate neutrophil-driven and adaptive immune responses, a mechanism of action which favours this approach for the treatment of HCC.