IL-27 sensitizes immune checkpoint blockade therapy by inducing Treg fragility in high-grade serous ovarian cancer
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ABSTRACT: To characterized the effect of IL-27 on the tumor immune microenvironment in vivo, we selected the subcutaneous tumor-infiltrating CD45+ lymphocytes from tumor in vehicle or recombinant mouse IL-27 treated mice,and performed single-cell RNA sequencing on lymphocytes.
Project description:While some of the inflammatory mechanisms driving hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) had been proposed, the regulators of anti-cancer immunity in HCC remain poorly understood. We found that IL-27 receptor (IL-27R) signaling promotes HCC development in vivo. High IL-27EBI3 or IL-27RA expression correlated with poor prognosis for patients with HCC. Loss of IL-27R suppressed HCC in vivo in two different models of hepatocarcinogenesis. Mechanistically, IL-27R signaling within the tumor microenvironment restrains the cytotoxicity of innate cytotoxic lymphocytes. IL-27R ablation enhanced the accumulation and activation, while depletion or functional impairment of innate cytotoxic cells abrogated the effect of IL-27R disruption. Pharmacological neutralization of IL-27 signaling increased infiltration of innate cytotoxic lymphocytes with upregulated cytotoxic molecules and reduced HCC development. Our data reveal an unexpected role of IL-27R signaling as an immunological checkpoint regulating innate cytotoxic lymphocytes and promoting HCC of different etiologies, thus indicating a therapeutic potential for IL-27 pathway blockade in HCC
Project description:The inhibitory receptor Tim-3 has emerged as a critical regulator of the T cell dysfunction that develops in chronic viral infections and cancers. However, little is known regarding the signaling pathways that drive Tim-3 expression. Here, we demonstrate that IL-27 induces NFIL3, which promotes permissive chromatin remodeling of the Tim-3 locus and induces Tim-3 expression together with the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10. We further show that the IL-27/NFIL3 signaling axis is crucial for the induction of Tim-3 in vivo. IL-27-conditioned Th1 cells exhibit reduced effector function and are poor mediators of intestinal inflammation. This inhibitory effect is NFIL3 dependent. In contrast, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) from IL-27R-/- mice exhibit reduced NFIL3, less Tim-3 expression and failure to develop dysfunctional phenotype, resulting in better tumor growth control. Thus, our data identify an IL-27/NFIL3 signaling axis as a key regulator of effector T cell responses via induction of Tim-3, IL-10, and T cell dysfunction. Through gene expression profile analysis, we identified a series of transcription factors that are induced by IL-27. Particularly, the induction of NFIL3 is highly relevant to Tim-3 expression. Naïve CD4+ T cells from C57BL/6 mice were stimulated with plate-bound anti-CD3 and anti-CD28 antibodies for 60 hours. The cells were subjected to gene profile analysis. A comparative transcriptome analysis between cells under neutral culture condition (Untreated) and cells treated with IL-27 (IL-27-treated) was peformed to screen transcription factors that are induced by IL-27 signaling.
Project description:The inhibitory receptor Tim-3 has emerged as a critical regulator of the T cell dysfunction that develops in chronic viral infections and cancers. However, little is known regarding the signaling pathways that drive Tim-3 expression. Here, we demonstrate that IL-27 induces NFIL3, which promotes permissive chromatin remodeling of the Tim-3 locus and induces Tim-3 expression together with the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10. We further show that the IL-27/NFIL3 signaling axis is crucial for the induction of Tim-3 in vivo. IL-27-conditioned Th1 cells exhibit reduced effector function and are poor mediators of intestinal inflammation. This inhibitory effect is NFIL3 dependent. In contrast, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) from IL-27R-/- mice exhibit reduced NFIL3, less Tim-3 expression and failure to develop dysfunctional phenotype, resulting in better tumor growth control. Thus, our data identify an IL-27/NFIL3 signaling axis as a key regulator of effector T cell responses via induction of Tim-3, IL-10, and T cell dysfunction. Through gene expression profile analysis, we identified a series of transcription factors that are induced by IL-27. Particularly, the induction of NFIL3 is highly relevant to Tim-3 expression.
Project description:Interleukin-27 (IL-27) is a pleiotropic cytokine that exhibits stimulatory/regulatory functions on multiple lineages of immune cells and has a potential to be used as a therapeutic for cancer. We have recently demonstrated that systemic delivery of IL-27 using adeno-associated virus (AAV-IL-27) exhibits potent inhibition of tumor growth in mouse models. In this work, we demonstrate that AAV-IL-27 treatment leads to significant expansion of CD11b+Gr1+ myeloid cells (MCs). AAV-IL-27-induced expansion of CD11b+Gr1+ cells is IL-27R-dependent, requires Stat3 signaling but is inhibited by Stat1 signaling. AAV-IL-27 treatment does not increase the self-renewal capacity of CD11b+Gr1+ cells but induces significant expansion of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and granulocyte-monocyte progenitor (GMP) cells. IL-27-induced Ly6G+ MCs upregulate MHC class I/II molecules but are less immune suppressive in vitro, and their expansion does not promote, but rather inhibit tumor growth in vivo. In the tumor microenvironment, IL-27 gene therapy appears to promote Ly6G+ MCs to differentiate into MHC class I/IIhigh and F4/80high macrophages. Thus, IL-27 gene therapy induces expansion of CD11b+Gr1+ myeloid cells and promotes their differentiation into anti-tumor M1 macrophages in tumor microenvironment.Bone marrow myeloid cells of tumor-bearing C57BL/6 mice treated with AAV-IL-27/ctrl for 2 weeks were sepreated by MACS. Transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq) of these purified Ly6G+ cells (>95%) was completed by BGI. Changing in gene express profiling resulted by IL-27 was analyzed in this study.
Project description:Interleukin-27 (IL-27) can partially reduce tumor growth in several animal models, including pros-tate cancer. We describe our findings on the effects of IL-27 gene delivery on prostate cancer cells and how sequential therapy with IL-18 enhances the efficacy of IL-27. We applied IL-27 and IL-18 deliv-ery with the goal of reducing prostate tumor growth, first in cell culture and then in an immunocom-petent mouse model. The combination of IL-27 followed by IL-18 (2718) successfully reduced can-cer cell viability, with significant effects found for a particular combination sequence. Interestingly, when we compared the 2718 combination with a single cytokine targeted to IL-6R via an oligo-peptide (27pepL) recently developed by our group, we observed similar efficacy. This efficacy was further enhanced when 27pepL was sequenced with IL-18 (27pepL18)
Project description:To examine the broad impact of IL-27 on human T lymphocytes, we performed a microarray analysis assessing >20,000 well annotated genes on purified naïve (CD45RA+CD45RO-CCR7+) and central memory (CD45RA-CD45RO+CCR7+) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from three healthy donors that were activated in vitro (plate bound anti-CD3 and soluble anti-CD28) in the presence or absence of human recombinant IL-27 (100 ng/mL). Our goal was to investigate the impact of interleukin-27 on the gene expression profil of human CD4 and CD8 T lymphocytes.
Project description:IL-27, a member of the IL-12- family of cytokines, has shown anti-tumor activity in several pre-clinical models due to anti-proliferative, anti-angiogenic and immune-enhancing effects. On the other hand, IL-27 demonstrated immune-regulatory activities and inhibition of auto-immunity in mouse models. Also, we reported that IL-27, similar to IFN-, induces the expression of IL-18BP, IDO and PD-L1 immune-regulatory molecules in human cancer cells. Here, a proteomic analysis reveals that IL-27 and IFN- display a broad overlap of functions on human ovarian cancer cells. Indeed, among 990 proteins modulated by either cytokine treatment in SKOV3 cells, 814 showed a concordant modulation by both cytokines, while a smaller number (176) were differentially modulated. The most up-regulated proteins were common to both IFN-γ and IL-27. In addition, functional analysis of IL-27- regulated protein networks highlighted pathways of interferon signaling and regulation, antigen presentation, protection from natural killer cell-mediated cytotoxicity, regulation of protein polyubiquitination and proteasome, aminoacid catabolism and regulation of viral protein levels.
Project description:Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) play a significant role in the tumor microenvironment in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). To better understand the interactions and functions of TILs in HGSOC progression, we performed proteogenomic profiling of TILs in 65 tumors collected from 12 HGSOC patients.
Project description:Interleukin-27 (IL-27) has shown promise in halting tumor growth and mediating tumor regression in several models, including prostate cancer. We describe our findings on the effects of IL-27 on the gene expression changes of TC2R prostate adenocarcinoma cells. We utilized RNAseq to assess profile differences between empty vector control, vector delivering IL-27 modified at its C-terminus with a non-specific peptide, and IL-27 modified at the C-terminus with a peptide targeting the IL-6-Rα. The targeted IL-27 had higher bioactivity and activity in vivo in a recent study by our group, but the mechanisms underlying this effect had not been characterized in detail at the gene expression level on tumor cells. In the present work, we sought to examine potential mechanisms for targeted IL-27 enhanced activity directly on tumor cells. The targeted IL-27 appeared to modulate several changes that would be consistent with an anti-tumor effect, including upregulation in the Interferon (IFN) and Interferon regulatory factor (IRF), oxidative phosphorylation, Janus kinase/Signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK/STAT), and eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (EIF2) signaling. Of these signaling changes predicted by ingenuity pathway analyses (IPA), the novel form also with the highest significance (-log(Benjamini–Hochberg (B-H))p-value) was the EIF2 signaling upregulation. We validated this predicted change by assaying for eukaryotic initiation factor 2 alpha (eIF2α), or phosphorylated eIF2α (p-eIF2α), and caspase-3 levels. We detected an increase in the phosphorylated form of eIF2α and in the cleaved caspase-3 fraction, indicating that the EIF2 signaling pathway was upregulated in these prostate tumor cells following targeted IL-27 gene delivery. This approach of targeting cytokines to enhance their activity against cancer cells is a novel approach to help augment IL-27′s bioactivity and efficacy against prostate tumors and could be extended to other conditions where it could help interfere with the EIF2α pathway and promote caspase-3 activation.