Science for Life Laboratory, Division of Genome Biology, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Breast Cancer Clinical Research Unit, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Madrid, Spain.
Mol Oncol. 2022 Jan;16(1):148-165. doi: 10.1002/1878-0261.13083. Epub 2021 Aug 29.
Among others, expression levels of programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) have been explored as biomarkers of the response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer therapy. Here, we present the results of a chemical screen that interrogated how medically approved drugs influence PD-L1 expression. As expected, corticosteroids and inhibitors of Janus kinases were among the top PD-L1 downregulators. In addition, we identified that PD-L1 expression is induced by antiestrogenic compounds. Transcriptomic analyses indicate that chronic estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) inhibition triggers a broad immunosuppressive program in ER-positive breast cancer cells, which is subsequent to their growth arrest and involves the activation of multiple immune checkpoints together with the silencing of the antigen-presenting machinery. Accordingly, estrogen-deprived MCF7 cells are resistant to T-cell-mediated cell killing, in a manner that is independent of PD-L1, but which is reverted by estradiol. Our study reveals that while antiestrogen therapies efficiently limit the growth of ER-positive breast cancer cells, they concomitantly trigger a transcriptional program that favors their immune evasion.
程序性细胞死亡配体 1(PD-L1)的表达水平已被探索作为癌症治疗中免疫检查点抑制剂反应的生物标志物。在这里,我们展示了一个化学筛选的结果,该筛选探究了已批准用于医学的药物如何影响 PD-L1 的表达。正如预期的那样,皮质类固醇和 Janus 激酶抑制剂是顶级 PD-L1 下调剂之一。此外,我们发现 PD-L1 的表达受抗雌激素化合物诱导。转录组分析表明,慢性雌激素受体 alpha(ERα)抑制在 ER 阳性乳腺癌细胞中引发广泛的免疫抑制程序,这是在其生长停滞之后发生的,涉及多个免疫检查点的激活以及抗原呈递机制的沉默。因此,缺乏雌激素的 MCF7 细胞对 T 细胞介导的细胞杀伤具有抗性,这种方式不依赖于 PD-L1,但可被雌二醇逆转。我们的研究表明,虽然抗雌激素疗法有效地限制了 ER 阳性乳腺癌细胞的生长,但它们同时触发了有利于其免疫逃逸的转录程序。