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CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Many patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) still fail current therapies. CD73 is a novel therapeutic target for solid tumors, but its role in CLL remains unclear. The aim of our study was to investigate the therapeutic potential of targeting CD73 in CLL. Using genetically...

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Autores principales: Allard, David, Chrobak, Pavel, Bareche, Yacine, Allard, Bertrand, Tessier, Priscilla, Bergeron, Marjorie A., Johnson, Nathalie A., Stagg, John
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9264813/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35804900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers14133130
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author Allard, David
Chrobak, Pavel
Bareche, Yacine
Allard, Bertrand
Tessier, Priscilla
Bergeron, Marjorie A.
Johnson, Nathalie A.
Stagg, John
author_facet Allard, David
Chrobak, Pavel
Bareche, Yacine
Allard, Bertrand
Tessier, Priscilla
Bergeron, Marjorie A.
Johnson, Nathalie A.
Stagg, John
author_sort Allard, David
collection PubMed
description SIMPLE SUMMARY: Many patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) still fail current therapies. CD73 is a novel therapeutic target for solid tumors, but its role in CLL remains unclear. The aim of our study was to investigate the therapeutic potential of targeting CD73 in CLL. Using genetically engineered mice, our study reports a pro-leukemic role for CD73 in an autochthonous mouse model of CLL. Furthermore, we observed an association between PD-L1 expression on CLL cells and adenosine signaling according to sex. Our findings provide a rationale for targeting CD73 in CLL in combination with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapies and suggest that sex may contribute to responses to adenosine-targeting agents. ABSTRACT: The ecto-nucleotidase CD73 is an important immune checkpoint in tumor immunity that cooperates with CD39 to hydrolyze pro-inflammatory extracellular ATP into immunosuppressive adenosine. While the role of CD73 in immune evasion of solid cancers is well established, its role in leukemia remains unclear. To investigate the role of CD73 in the pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice that spontaneously develop CLL were crossed with CD73(−/−) mice. Disease progression in peripheral blood and spleen, and CLL markers were evaluated by flow cytometry and survival was compared to CD73-proficient Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice. We observed that CD73 deficiency significantly delayed CLL progression and prolonged survival in Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice, and was associated with increased accumulation of IFN-γ(+) T cells and effector-memory CD8(+) T cells. Neutralizing IFN-γ abrogated the survival advantage of CD73-deficient Eµ-TCL1 mice. Intriguingly, the beneficial effects of CD73 deletion were restricted to male mice. In females, CD73 deficiency was uniquely associated with the upregulation of CD39 in normal lymphocytes and sustained high PD-L1 expression on CLL cells. In vitro studies revealed that adenosine signaling via the A2a receptor enhanced PD-L1 expression on Eµ-TCL1-derived CLL cells, and a genomic analysis of human CLL samples found that PD-L1 correlated with adenosine signaling. Our study, thus, identified CD73 as a pro-leukemic immune checkpoint in CLL and uncovered a previously unknown sex bias for the CD73-adenosine pathway.
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spelling pubmed-92648132022-07-09 CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Allard, David Chrobak, Pavel Bareche, Yacine Allard, Bertrand Tessier, Priscilla Bergeron, Marjorie A. Johnson, Nathalie A. Stagg, John Cancers (Basel) Article SIMPLE SUMMARY: Many patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) still fail current therapies. CD73 is a novel therapeutic target for solid tumors, but its role in CLL remains unclear. The aim of our study was to investigate the therapeutic potential of targeting CD73 in CLL. Using genetically engineered mice, our study reports a pro-leukemic role for CD73 in an autochthonous mouse model of CLL. Furthermore, we observed an association between PD-L1 expression on CLL cells and adenosine signaling according to sex. Our findings provide a rationale for targeting CD73 in CLL in combination with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapies and suggest that sex may contribute to responses to adenosine-targeting agents. ABSTRACT: The ecto-nucleotidase CD73 is an important immune checkpoint in tumor immunity that cooperates with CD39 to hydrolyze pro-inflammatory extracellular ATP into immunosuppressive adenosine. While the role of CD73 in immune evasion of solid cancers is well established, its role in leukemia remains unclear. To investigate the role of CD73 in the pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice that spontaneously develop CLL were crossed with CD73(−/−) mice. Disease progression in peripheral blood and spleen, and CLL markers were evaluated by flow cytometry and survival was compared to CD73-proficient Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice. We observed that CD73 deficiency significantly delayed CLL progression and prolonged survival in Eµ-TCL1 transgenic mice, and was associated with increased accumulation of IFN-γ(+) T cells and effector-memory CD8(+) T cells. Neutralizing IFN-γ abrogated the survival advantage of CD73-deficient Eµ-TCL1 mice. Intriguingly, the beneficial effects of CD73 deletion were restricted to male mice. In females, CD73 deficiency was uniquely associated with the upregulation of CD39 in normal lymphocytes and sustained high PD-L1 expression on CLL cells. In vitro studies revealed that adenosine signaling via the A2a receptor enhanced PD-L1 expression on Eµ-TCL1-derived CLL cells, and a genomic analysis of human CLL samples found that PD-L1 correlated with adenosine signaling. Our study, thus, identified CD73 as a pro-leukemic immune checkpoint in CLL and uncovered a previously unknown sex bias for the CD73-adenosine pathway. MDPI 2022-06-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9264813/ /pubmed/35804900 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers14133130 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Allard, David
Chrobak, Pavel
Bareche, Yacine
Allard, Bertrand
Tessier, Priscilla
Bergeron, Marjorie A.
Johnson, Nathalie A.
Stagg, John
CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title_full CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title_fullStr CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title_full_unstemmed CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title_short CD73 Promotes Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
title_sort cd73 promotes chronic lymphocytic leukemia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9264813/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35804900
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers14133130
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