Dataset Information

Entinostat decreases immune suppression to promote an anti-tumor response within a HER2+ breast tumor microenvironment.

ABSTRACT: Therapeutic combinations to alter solid tumor microenvironments (TME) in immunosuppressive tumors such as breast cancer are essential to improve their responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Entinostat, an oral histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi), has been shown to improve responses to ICIs in various tumor models with immunosuppressive TMEs. The precise and comprehensive alterations to the TME induced by entinostat remain unknown. Here, we employ single-cell RNA-sequencing on HER2 overexpressing breast tumors from mice treated with entinostat and ICIs to characterize for the first time changes across all cell types within the TME. This analysis demonstrates that treatment with entinostat induces a shift from a pro-tumor to an anti-tumor TME signature characterized predominantly by changes in the myeloid cells. We confirm myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) within entinostat-treated tumors are associated with a less suppressive G-MDSC phenotype and now demonstrate altered suppressive signaling involves the NFkB and STAT3 pathways. In addition to MDSCs, tumor-associated macrophages are epigenetically reprogrammed toward an anti-tumor M1-like phenotype likely contributing to a more sensitized TME. Overall, our in-depth analysis suggests entinostat-induced changes on multiple myeloid cell types reduce immunosuppression and increase mechanisms of an anti-tumor response that improve sensitivity to ICI. Sensitization of the TME by entinostat could ultimately broaden the population of patients with breast cancer who could derive benefit from ICIs.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE166321 | GEO | 2022/01/18

REPOSITORIES: GEO

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are immature myeloid cells that accumulate in the tumor microenvironment of most cancer patients. There MDSCs suppress both adaptive and innate immune responses, hindering immunotherapies. Moreover, many cancers are accompanied by inflammation, a processes that further intensifies MDSC suppressive activity, causing aggressive tumor progression and metastasis. MDSCs collected from tumor-bearing mice profusely release nano-scale membrane-bound extracellular vesicles, called exosomes, which carry biologically active proteins between cells and contribute directly to the immune suppressive functions of MDSC. Many studies on other cell types have shown that exosomes may also carry microRNAs (miRNAs) and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) which can also be transferred to surrounding and distant cells. However, to the best of our knowledge, the miRNA and mRNA cargo of MDSC-derived exosomes has not yet been interrogated. This study aims to identify and quantify the cargo of MDSC and their immunosuppressive exosomes to gather knowledge that can offer insights on the mechanisms by which MDSCs contribute to immune suppression, focusing on the role of exosomes as intercellular communication mediators in the tumor microenvironment. In order to achieve our objective a well-established mouse model based on a conventional mammary carcinoma (4T1 cells) and heightened inflammation (4T1 transduced to express the cytokine interleukin-1b) was used. We provide evidence that MDSC-derived exosomes carry proteins, mRNAs and miRNAs. Relative quantitation demonstrated quantitative differences between the exosome cargo and the cargo of their parental cells, supporting the hypothesis that selective loading into the exosomes is possible. Additionally, quantitative and functional analyses of the exosome cargo generated under conventional and heightened inflammation conditions are consistent with clinical observations that inflammation is linked to cancer development.

Project description:Immunotherapeutics represent highly promising agents with the potential to improve patient outcomes in a variety of cancer types. Unfortunately, single-agent immunotherapy has achieved limited clinical benefit to date in patients suffering from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). This may be due to the presence of a uniquely immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) present in PDACs, which creates a barrier to effective immune surveillance. Critical obstacles to immunotherapy in PDAC tumors include the dense desmoplastic stroma that acts as a barrier to T-cell infiltration and the high numbers of tumor-associated immunosuppressive cells. We have identified hyperactivated focal adhesion kinase (FAK) activity in neoplastic PDAC cells as a significant regulator of the fibrotic and immunosuppressive TME. We found that FAK activity was elevated in human PDAC tissues and correlates with high levels of fibrosis and poor CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell infiltration. Single-agent FAK inhibition (VS-4718) dramatically limited tumor progression, resulting in a doubling of survival in the p48-Cre/LSL-KrasG12D/p53Flox/+ (KPC) mouse model of human PDAC. This alteration in tumor progression was associated with dramatically reduced tumor fibrosis, decreased numbers of tumor-infiltrating immature myeloid cells and immunosuppressive macrophages. We postulated that these desirable effects of FAK inhibition on the TME might render PDAC tumors more sensitive to immunotherapy. Accordingly, we found that VS-4718 rendered the previously unresponsive KPC mouse model responsive to anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 antagonists leading to a nearly tripling of survival times. These data suggest that FAK inhibition increases immune surveillance by overcoming the fibrotic and immunosuppressive PDAC TME thus rendering tumors more responsive to immunotherapy. We treated KP orthotopic tumor-bearing mice with vehicle and FAK inhibitor (FAKi) for 14 days, then extracted total RNA from tumor tissues.

Dataset Information

Entinostat decreases immune suppression to promote an anti-tumor response within a HER2+ breast tumor microenvironment.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure