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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ute JungwirthORCiD, Dr Syed Haider
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
©2022 The Authors. Immune-checkpoint blockade (ICB) promotes antitumor immune responses and can result in durable patient benefit. However, response rates in breast cancer patients remain modest, stimulating efforts to discover novel treatment options. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) represent a major component of the breast tumor microenvironment and have known immunosuppressive functions in addition to their well-established roles in directly promoting tumor growth and metastasis. Here we utilized paired syngeneic mouse mammary carcinoma models to show that CAF abundance is associated with insensitivity to combination aCTLA4 and aPD-L1 ICB. CAF-rich tumors exhibited an immunologically cold tumor microenvironment, with transcriptomic, flow cytometric, and quantitative histopathologic analyses demonstrating a relationship between CAF density and a CD8+ T-cell–excluded tumor phenotype. The CAF receptor Endo180 (Mrc2) is predominantly expressed on myofibroblastic CAFs, and its genetic deletion depleted a subset of aSMA-expressing CAFs and impaired tumor progression in vivo. The addition of wild-type, but not Endo180-deficient, CAFs in coimplantation studies restricted CD8+ T-cell intratumoral infiltration, and tumors in Endo180 knockout mice exhibited increased CD8+ T-cell infiltration and enhanced sensitivity to ICB compared with tumors in wild-type mice. Clinically, in a trial of melanoma patients, high MRC2 mRNA levels in tumors were associated with a poor response to aPD-1 therapy, highlighting the potential benefits of therapeutically targeting a specific CAF subpopulation in breast and other CAF-rich cancers to improve clinical responses to immunotherapy.
Author(s): Jenkins L, Jungwirth U, Avgustinova A, Iravani M, Mills A, Haider S, Harper J, Isacke CM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Cancer Research
Year: 2022
Volume: 82
Issue: 16
Pages: 2904-2917
Print publication date: 15/08/2022
Online publication date: 16/08/2022
Acceptance date: 17/06/2022
Date deposited: 13/02/2024
ISSN (print): 0008-5472
ISSN (electronic): 1538-7445
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research Inc.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-21-4141
DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-21-4141
PubMed id: 35749591
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