Journal
CANCER RESEARCH
Volume 77, Issue 15, Pages 3982-3989Publisher
AMER ASSOC CANCER RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-16-3292
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NIH [P01 CA080111, R01-AI087879-06, R01-GM100518-04]
- Breast Cancer Research Foundation
- Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation
- Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology
- Lustgarten Foundation
- Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research
- Cancer Research Institute
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a cell biological program that confers mesenchymal traits on carcinoma cells and drives their metastatic dissemination. It is unclear, however, whether the activation of EMT in carcinoma cells can change their susceptibility to immune attack. We demonstrate here that mammary tumor cells arising from more epithelial carcinoma cell lines expressed high levels of MHC-I, low levels of PD-L1, and contained within their stroma CD8(+) T cells and M1 (antitumor) macrophages. In contrast, tumors arising from more mesenchymal carcinoma cell lines exhibiting EMT markers expressed low levels of MHC-I, high levels of PD-L1, and contained within their stroma regulatory T cells, M2 (protumor) macrophages, and exhausted CD8(+) T cells. Moreover, the more mesenchymal carcinoma cells within a tumor retained the ability to protect their more epithelial counterparts from immune attack. Finally, epithelial tumors were more susceptible to elimination by immunotherapy than corresponding mesenchymal tumors. Our results identify immune cells and immunomodulatory markers that can be potentially targeted to enhance the susceptibility of immunosuppressive tumors to various therapeutic regimens. (C) 2017 AACR.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available