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Reduction of Fibrosis and Immune Suppressive Cells in ErbB2-Dependent Tumorigenesis by an LXR Agonist

ABSTRACT: One of the central challenges for cancer therapy is the identification of factors in the tumor microenvironment that increase tumor progression and prevent immune surveillance. One such element associated with breast cancer is stromal fibrosis, a histopathologic criterion for invasive cancer and poor survival. Fibrosis is caused by inflammatory factors and remodeling of the extracellular matrix that elicit an immune tolerant microenvironment. To address the role of fibrosis in tumorigenesis, we developed NeuT/ATTAC transgenic mice expressing a constitutively active NeuT/erbB2 transgene, and an inducible, fat-directed caspase-8 fusion protein, which upon activation results in selective and partial ablation of mammary fat and its replacement with fibrotic tissue. Induction of fibrosis in NeuT/ATTAC mice led to more rapid tumor development and an inflammatory and fibrotic stromal environment. In an effort to explore therapeutic options that could reduce fibrosis and immune tolerance, mice were treated with the oxysterol liver X receptor (LXR) pan agonist, N,N-dimethyl-3ꞵ-hydroxy-cholenamide (DMHCA), an agent known to reduce fibrosis in non-malignant diseases. DMHCA reduced tumor progression, tumor multiplicity and fibrosis, and improved immune surveillance by reducing infiltrating myeloid-derived suppressor cells and increasing CD4 and CD8 effector T cells. These effects were associated with an LXR-dependent gene network coupled to reduction of PTGS2, CCL5, S100A9, SPP1, ANXA1 and CD14. These findings suggest that the use of DMHCA may be a potentially effective approach to reduce desmoplasia and immune tolerance and increase the efficacy of cancer therapy.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE166864 | GEO | 2021/02/17

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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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.

Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent human cancer with rising incidence worldwide. Human HCC is frequently associated with chronic liver inflammation and cirrhosis, pathophysiological processes that are a consequence of chronic viral infection, disturbances in metabolism, or exposure to chemical toxicants. To better characterize the pathogenesis of HCC, we used a human disease-relevant mouse model of fibrosis-associated hepatocarcinogenesis. In this model, marked liver tumor response caused by a pro-mutagenic chemical N-nitrosodiethylamine in presence of liver fibrosis was associated with epigenetic events indicative of genomic instability. Therefore, we hypothesized that DNA copy number alterations (CNAs), a feature of genomic instability and a common characteristic of cancer, are concordant between human HCC and mouse models of fibrosis-associated hepatocarcinogenesis. We evaluated DNA CNAs and changes in gene expression in the mouse liver (normal, tumor and non-tumor cirrhotic tissues). In addition, we compared our findings to those in human HCC (tumor and non-tumor cirrhotic/fibrotic tissues). We observed that while fibrotic liver tissue is largely devoid of DNA CNAs, highly frequently occurring DNA CNAs are found in mouse tumors, which is indicative of a profound increase in chromosomal instability in HCC. When compared to CNAs in human HCC, we found that 33% of genes in these segments are similarly affected in the mouse tumors. Our results suggest that CNAs most commonly arise in neoplastic tissue rather than in fibrotic liver, and demonstrate the utility of this mouse model in replicating the molecular features of human HCC. Genomic DNA was extracted from frozen liver samples from vehicle-control and DEN+CCl4-treated mice using a DNEasy kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA). Eighteen mouse tumor samples were included in the study, as well as 18 matched non-tumor samples taken from fibrotic, non-tumorous, surrounding liver tissue from the same mice. Liver DNA from 6 vehicle control-mice was pooled and used as the reference genome in the aCGH experiments. Copy number alterations were identified using the normalized data.

Project description:Introduction. Factors contributing to kidney transplant fibrosis remain incompletely understood—particularly in the absence of acute complications. Methods. Baseline and one-year surveillance biopsies from 15 uncomplicated living donor kidney transplants were subjected to microarray and quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analyses in order to examine changes in gene expression patterns over time. Biopsy pairs were purposefully selected from allografts with no history of acute complications and were divided into those that were histologically normal (n = 7) and those that had developed subclinical interstitial fibrosis (n = 8) at 1 year. Results. Compared to the paired baseline specimens, expression levels of 3578 probesets were found altered in all the one-year biopsies studied. A large proportion of the upregulated genes in this transplant-associated profile were functionally linked with inflammation, immunity or response to injury. These included components of inflammation-related signaling pathways (integrin, interferon and TLR) as well as individual mediators of inflammatory and immune responses. An additional 2884 probesets demonstrated altered expression in fibrotic grafts only at 1 year. The gene products in this fibrosis-associated profile were also predominantly linked with inflammation and immune function, suggesting exaggerated inflammatory activity within the fibrotic grafts. qRT-PCR analyses confirmed the predicted expression patterns for selected transcripts from the microarray profiles. Conclusions. Transcriptional profiles of histologically normal living donor renal allografts indicate that there is ongoing injury response and inflammation at 1 year compared to the immediate post-transplant period. Subclinical development of interstitial fibrosis during the first post-transplant year is associated with additional upregulation of inflammation-related genes. Keywords: time course, comparative expression We analyzed gene expression from a group of 15 renal transplant patients. All patients had histologically normal time zero biopsy but while 7 remained histologically normal (TxNorm), 8 developed subclinical interstitial fibrosis (GIF/TA) by 1 year. Patient groups were carefully selected to include patients on the same immunosuppresion therapy, transplant type, biopsy histology and absence of overt post-transplant complications (acute rejection, BK, etc). This dataset is part of the TransQST collection.

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Reduction of Fibrosis and Immune Suppressive Cells in ErbB2-Dependent Tumorigenesis by an LXR Agonist

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