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Granulocytic immune infiltrates are essential for the efficient formation of breast cancer liver metastases

ABSTRACT: Breast cancer cells display preferences for specific metastatic sites including the bone, lung and liver. Metastasis is a complex process that relies, in part, on interactions between disseminated cancer cells and resident/infiltrating stromal cells that constitute the metastatic microenvironment. Distinct immune infiltrates can either impair the metastatic process or conversely, assist in the seeding, colonization and growth of disseminated cancer cells. Using in vivo selection approaches, we previously isolated 4T1-derived breast cancer cells that preferentially metastasize to these organs and tissues. In this study, we examined whether the propensity of breast cancer cells to metastasize to the lung, liver or bone is associated with and dependent on distinct patterns of immune cell infiltration. Immunohistocytochemistry and immunohistofluorescence approaches were used to quantify granulocytic infiltrates within distinct metastases and depletion of Gr1+ cells was performed to functionally interrogate the role of myeloid/granulocytic infiltrates in promoting metastasis to these organs. We show that T lymphocytes (CD3+), myeloid-derived/granulocytic cells (Gr-1+) cells and neutrophils (NE+) exhibit the most pronounced recruitment in lung and liver metastases, with markedly less recruitment within bone metastatic lesions. Interestingly, these infiltrating cell populations display different patterns of localization within soft tissue metastases. T lymphocytes and neutrophils are localized around the periphery of liver metastases whereas they were dispersed throughout the lung metastases. Furthermore, Gr-1+ cell-depletion studies demonstrate that infiltrating myeloid-derived/granulocytic cells, including neutrophils, are essential for the formation of breast cancer liver metastases but dispensable for metastasis to the lung and bone. Finally, we demonstrate that neutrophils that infiltrate and surround the liver metastases are polarized towards an N2 phenotype, which have previously been shown to enhance tumor growth and metastasis. Our results demonstrate that the liver metastatic potential of breast cancer cells is heavily reliant on interactions with infiltrating myeloid/granulocytic cells in the liver microenvironment.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE62598 | GEO | 2015/03/20

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA264523

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Metabolic rewiring is essential for breast tumor growth and progression to metastatic disease, yet little is known regarding how cancer cells modify their acquired metabolic programs in response to different metastatic microenvironments. Transcriptional and metabolomic analysis have previously shown that liver-metastatic breast cancer cells adopt an intrinsic metabolic profile characterized by increased HIF-1α activity and dependence on glycolysis. Stable isotope tracing analysis (SITA) performed in vivo confirmed that the glycolytic nature of liver-metastatic breast cancer cells is retained when these cells are grown as primary tumors or as liver metastases. However, our data also reveal that unique metabolic adaptations are specifically induced by the liver microenvironment. Indeed, liver metastases display elevated expression of genes involved in glutathione (GSH) biosynthesis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) detoxification when compared to primary tumors. Moreover, breast cancer liver metastases rely strongly on glucose and glutamine-derived carbons to support de novo GSH synthesis. Glutathione is a tripeptide that acts as a major scavenger for reactive oxygen species (ROS). Liver metastases display reduced levels of 8-Oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine, confirming their increased capacity to buffer ROS. We demonstrated the dependence of liver metastases formation on these distinct metabolic adaptations by depleting glutamate-cysteine ligase (Gcl), the rate-limiting enzyme in glutathione biosynthesis. Gcl depletion, and decreased GSH levels, strongly reduced the capacity of liver-metastatic cells to form distant metastasis within the liver. We performed gene expression analysis of liver metastasis and primary tumors from liver-metastatic breast cancer cells derived from 4T1 cells. 4T1-2776 (76) and 4T1-2792 (92) cells were injected in the mammary fat pads of BALB/c and grown as primary tumors or were grown as liver metastasis after splenic injection. Tissues were harvested from primary tumors and liver metastasis and submitted to laser-capture microdissection (LCM). For liver metastasis, tumour tissue was harvested at 10 days, 2 weeks and 3 weeks after splenic injection. For each time point, tissue was isolated from the tumor centre (core), a peripheral area of the tumor (margin), a region of the liver proximal to the tumor (adjacent) and a region of the liver far from the tumor (distant). For primary tumors from 4T1-2776 cells (1034, 1036, 1043) and 4T1-2792 (MFP2L, MFP3L, MFP5L) tissue was collected from the tumor core and margin, at the experimental endpoint.

Project description:The goal of this dataset is to compare the gene expression patterns between primary and metastatic tumors Metastatic cancer patients typically have short survival times and their successful treatment represents one of most challenging aspects of patient care. This poor prognostic behavior is likely due to many factors, including increased clonal heterogeneity, multiple drug resistance mechanisms, and the role of the tumor microenvironment. The AURORA US Metastasis Project was established to collect and molecularly characterize specimens from 55 breast cancer (BC) patients representing 51 primary cancers and 102 metastases. The 153 unique tumors were assayed using RNAseq, tumor/germline DNA exomes and low pass whole genome sequencing, and global DNA methylation microarrays. We found intrinsic molecular subtype differences between primary tumors and their matched metastases to be rare in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC)/Basal-like subtype tumors. Conversely, tumor subtype changes were relatively frequent in estrogen receptor positive (ER+) cancers where ~30% of Luminal A cases switched to Luminal B or HER2-enriched (HER2E) subtype. Clonal evolution studies identified changes in expression subtype coincident with DNA clonality shifts, especially involving HER2 amplification and/or the HER2E expression subtype. Microenvironment differences varied according to tumor subtype where ER+/Luminal metastases had lower fibroblast and endothelial cell content, while TNBC/Basal-like metastases showed a dramatic decrease in adaptive immunity. In 17% of metastatic tumors, we identified DNA methylation and/or focal DNA deletions near HLA-A that were associated with its significantly reduced expression, and with lower immune cell infiltrates. We also identified low immune cell features in brain and liver metastases when compared to other metastatic sites, even within the same patient. These findings have direct implications for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer patients with immune- and HER2-targeting therapies and suggest potential novel therapeutic avenues for the improvement of outcomes for some MBC patients.

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Granulocytic immune infiltrates are essential for the efficient formation of breast cancer liver metastases

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