Effective therapies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain challenging despite an increasingly comprehensive understanding of somatically altered oncogenic pathways. It is now clear that therapeutic agents with potential to impact the tumor immune microenvironment potentiate immune-orchestrated therapeutic benefit. Herein we evaluated the immunoregulatory properties of histone deacetylase (HDAC) and bromodomain inhibitors, two classes of drugs that modulate the epigenome, with a focus on key cell subsets that are engaged in an immune response. By evaluating human peripheral blood and NSCLC tumors, we show that the selective HDAC6 inhibitor ricolinostat promotes phenotypic changes that support enhanced T cell activation and improved function of antigen presenting cells. The bromodomain inhibitor JQ1 attenuated CD4+Foxp3+ T regulatory cell suppressive function and synergized with ricolinostat to facilitate immune-mediated tumor growth arrest, leading to prolonged survival of mice with lung adenocarcinomas. Collectively, our findings highlight the immunomodulatory effects of two epigenetic modifiers that, together, promote T cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity and demonstrate their therapeutic potential for treatment of NSCLC. Overall design: Single-cell comparison of vehicle (control) and HDAC inhibitor (ricolinostat)-treated tumor infiltrating T cells and macrophages
Synergistic Immunostimulatory Effects and Therapeutic Benefit of Combined Histone Deacetylase and Bromodomain Inhibition in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.
Specimen part, Cell line, Treatment, Subject
View SamplesBackground: Immune checkpoint blockade improves survival in a subset of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but robust biomarkers that predict response to PD-1 pathway inhibitors are lacking. Furthermore, our understanding of the diversity of the NSCLC tumor immune microenvironment remains limited. Methods: We performed comprehensive flow-cytometric immunoprofiling on both tumor and immune cells from 51 NSCLCs and integrated this analysis with clinical and histopathologic characteristics, next generation sequencing, mRNA expression, and PD-L1 immunohistochemistry (IHC). Results: Cytometric profiling identified an immunologically “hot” cluster with abundant CD8+ T cells expressing high levels of the PD-1 and TIM-3, and an immunologically “cold” cluster with lower relative abundance of CD8+ T cells and expression of inhibitory markers. The “hot” cluster was highly enriched for expression of genes associated with T cell trafficking and cytotoxic function, and high PD-L1 expression by IHC. There was no correlation between immunophenotype and KRAS or EGFR mutation, or patient smoking history, but we did observe an enrichment of squamous subtype and tumors with higher mutation burden in the “hot” cluster. Additionally, ~20% of cases had high B cell infiltrates with a subset producing IL-10. Conclusions: Our results support the use of immune-based metrics to study response and resistance to immunotherapy in lung cancer. Background: Immune checkpoint blockade improves survival in a subset of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but robust biomarkers that predict response to PD-1 pathway inhibitors are lacking. Furthermore, our understanding of the diversity of the NSCLC tumor immune microenvironment remains limited. Methods: We performed comprehensive flow-cytometric immunoprofiling on both tumor and immune cells from 51 NSCLCs and integrated this analysis with clinical and histopathologic characteristics, next generation sequencing, mRNA expression, and PD-L1 immunohistochemistry (IHC). Results: Cytometric profiling identified an immunologically “hot” cluster with abundant CD8+ T cells expressing high levels of the PD-1 and TIM-3, and an immunologically “cold” cluster with lower relative abundance of CD8+ T cells and expression of inhibitory markers. The “hot” cluster was highly enriched for expression of genes associated with T cell trafficking and cytotoxic function, and high PD-L1 expression by IHC. There was no correlation between immunophenotype and KRAS or EGFR mutation, or patient smoking history, but we did observe an enrichment of squamous subtype and tumors with higher mutation burden in the “hot” cluster. Additionally, ~20% of cases had high B cell infiltrates with a subset producing IL-10. Conclusions: Our results support the use of immune-based metrics to study response and resistance to immunotherapy in lung cancer. Overall design: Single-cell comparison of normal and tumor infiltrated B-cells.
Multiparametric profiling of non-small-cell lung cancers reveals distinct immunophenotypes.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesImmune checkpoint blockade has shown tremendous anti-tumor potential in the clinic. However, these therapies are only effective in a subset of patients, so identification of additional immunomodulatory molecules that enhance the anti-tumor activity of these treatments may expand their clinical utility. In particular, identifying small molecules that complement existing immunotherapies has been relatively unexplored, so we performed a small molecule screen to identify compounds that can enhance co-inhibitory molecule blockade, to improve the anti-tumor adaptive immune response. Our unbiased screen identified inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 (CDK4/6), including the FDA-approved palbociclib, as a class of small molecule compounds that exhibited significant immunostimulatory activity in vitro. In accordance with our in vitro finding of enhanced NFAT signaling, single-cell RNA-sequencing confirmed that in vivo exposure to CDK4/6 inhibitors enhanced NFAT signaling in tumor infiltrating T cells. Moreover, our results revealed that CDK4/6 inhibition up-regulated activation molecules and down-regulated suppressive molecules in these cells. CDK4/6 inhibition also increased the number of T cells with activated TCR (T cell receptor) signaling, as well as factors that are important for signal transduction downstream of TCR signaling. In summary, the impact of CDK4/6i on cell cycle progression and T cell proliferation are balanced favorably towards increased T cell recruitment and enhanced effector cell function, mediated in part by activation of the NFAT family of transcription factors. Further, our results demonstrate that CDK4/6i enhances PD-1 blockade through increased T-cell effector function and inhibition of immune suppressive cytokine production. While prolonged CDK4/6i treatment could be immunosuppressive due to adverse effects on lymphocyte proliferation, properly timed/sequenced CDK4/6i may potentiate the clinical impact of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies. As palbociclib is FDA-approved and multiple other CDK4/6 inhibitors are in clinical trials, we expect that this hypothesis will undergo rapid testing in humans. Overall design: Single-cell comparison of control and CDK4/6 inhibitor treated tumor infiltrating T cells
CDK4/6 Inhibition Augments Antitumor Immunity by Enhancing T-cell Activation.
Specimen part, Cell line, Subject
View SamplesCellular replicative senescence, a state of permanent cell-cycle arrest that occurs following an extended period of cell division in culture, has been linked to organismal aging, tissue repair and tumorigenesis. In this study, we comparatively investigated the global lipid profiles and mRNA content of proliferating and senescent-state BJ fibroblast cells. We found that both the expression levels of lipid-regulating genes, as well as the abundance of specific lipid families, are actively regulated. We further found that 19 polyunsaturated triacylglycerol species showed the most prominent changes during replicative senescence. We argue that diversion of polyunsaturated fatty acids to glycerolipid biosynthesis could be responsible for the accumulation of specific triacylglycerols. This, in turn, could be one of the cellular mechanisms to prevent lipotoxicity under increased oxidative stress conditions observed during replicative senescence. Collectively, our results place regulation of specific lipid species to a central role during replicative senescence. Overall design: We sequence total RNA from 3 early PD and 3 senesent human BJ cell lines to detect the expressional differences between early PD and senescent cells.
Regulation of lipids is central to replicative senescence.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesThis SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.
Characterisation of cisplatin-induced transcriptomics responses in primary mouse hepatocytes, HepG2 cells and mouse embryonic stem cells shows conservation of regulating transcription factor networks.
Cell line, Treatment, Time
View SamplesThe transcriptomic changes induced in the human liver cell line HepG2 by 7M of cisplatin after treatment for 12, 24 and 48h
Characterisation of cisplatin-induced transcriptomics responses in primary mouse hepatocytes, HepG2 cells and mouse embryonic stem cells shows conservation of regulating transcription factor networks.
Cell line, Treatment, Time
View SamplesThe transcriptomic changes induced in primary mouse hepatocytes (C57BL/6 ) by 7M of cisplatin after treatment for 24 and 48h
Characterisation of cisplatin-induced transcriptomics responses in primary mouse hepatocytes, HepG2 cells and mouse embryonic stem cells shows conservation of regulating transcription factor networks.
Cell line, Treatment, Time
View SamplesDeep sequencing of total RNA isolated from the chromatin fraction of MCF-7 cells. Overall design: Stranded total RNA-seq (rRNA-minus) of chromatin-isolated RNA from estradiol starved and estradiol induced MCF-7 cells.
Long ncRNA A-ROD activates its target gene DKK1 at its release from chromatin.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesDeep sequencing of total RNA isolated from the nucleoplasmic fraction of MCF-7 cells. Overall design: Stranded total RNA-seq of total nucleoplasmic RNA (ribospecies depleted) from MCF-7 cells.
Long ncRNA A-ROD activates its target gene DKK1 at its release from chromatin.
Specimen part, Cell line, Subject
View SamplesAfter inactivation of Hoxa5 at postnatal days (P)1-P4, we established RNA-seq profiling with RNA extracted from P21 brainstem of tamoxifen-treated Hoxa5flox/flox;CMV-CreERT2+/- (Hoxa5 cKO) pups and tamoxifen-treated Hoxa5flox/flox;CMV-CreERT2-/-(Hoxa5 control) pups Overall design: To explore HOXA5 downstream target genes in the postnatal brainstem, we carried out transcriptomic analyses by RNA-Seq using a model of postnatal Hoxa5 loss-of-function. We induced Hoxa5 inactivation after birth (P1 to P4) using the tamoxifen-inducible CMV-CreERT2 mice and conditional Hoxa5 floxed allele mice (Hoxa5flox). RNA was extracted from the brainstem of P21 tamoxifen-treated Hoxa5flox/flox;CMV-CreERT2+/- pups and from tamoxifen-treated Hoxa5flox/flox;CMV-CreERT2-/- littermates (see extract protocol).
Conditional Loss of <i>Hoxa5</i> Function Early after Birth Impacts on Expression of Genes with Synaptic Function.
Specimen part, Treatment, Subject
View Samples