PCC0208018 exerts antitumor effects by activating effector T cells

Poor prognosis is associated with melanoma due to immunosuppression profiles, suggesting that immune alterations have an important role in the occurrence, growth, and metastasis of melanoma. Here, we found that PCC0208018, a small-molecule compound, enhanced T cell proliferation and activation to release interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) without blocking the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1)/programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) binding and did not directly affect tumor cell viability in vitro. Furthermore, PCC0208018 increased the phosphorylation of protein kinase B (PKB/AKT) as well as extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERK) in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in vitro. The secretion of cytokines induced by PCC0208018 was significantly suppressed by the PI3K inhibitor GDC-0941. In B16-F10 melanoma-harboring mice, PCC0208018 significantly inhibited tumor growth as well as increasing CD3(+), CD3(+)CD4(+), and CD3(+)CD8(+) T cell abundance in tumors without affecting PD-L1 expression. This study showed that PCC0208018 potentially increased PBMCs proliferation and function by activating the phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K)/AKT and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK)/ERK pathways to exert antitumor effects.