Peritumoural neutrophils negatively regulate adaptive immunity via the PD-L1/PD-1 signalling pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma

BACKGROUND: PD-L1 expression on neutrophils contributes to the impaired immune response in infectious disease, but the detailed role of PD-L1 expression on neutrophils in HCC remains unclear. METHODS: We investigated the phenotype and morphology of neutrophils infiltrated in tumour tissues from both patients with HCC and hepatoma-bearing mice. RESULTS: We found that neutrophils dominantly infiltrated in the peritumoural region. The neutrophil-to-T cell ratio (NLR) was higher in peritumoural tissue than that in the intratumoural tissue and was negatively correlated with the overall survival of patients with HCC. Infiltrating neutrophils displayed a phenotype of higher frequency of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) positive neutrophils. The ratio of PD-L1(+) neutrophils-to-PD-1(+) T cells was higher in peritumoural tissue and better predicted the disease-free survival of patients with HCC. We further confirmed a higher frequency of PD-L1(+) neutrophils and PD-1(+) T cells in hepatoma-bearing mice. Functionally, the PD-L1(+) neutrophils from patients with HCC effectively suppressed the proliferation and activation of T cells, which could be partially reversed by the blockade of PD-L1. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the tumour microenvironment induces impaired antitumour immunity via the modulation of PD-L1 expression on tumour infiltrating neutrophils. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13046-015-0256-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.