Association of human breast cancer CD44-/CD24- cells with delayed distant metastasis
- Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, China
- Shengjing hospital of China Medical University, China
- Tongji Medical College, China
- Xijing Hospital of Fourth Military Medical University, China
- Cancer Hospital of China Medical University, China
- Cancer Center of Dalian Medical University, China
- Dalian University of Technology, China
Abstract
Tumor metastasis remains the main cause of breast cancer-related deaths, especially delayed breast cancer distant metastasis. The current study assessed the frequency of CD44-/CD24- breast cancer cells in 576 tissue specimens for associations with clinicopathological features and metastasis and investigated the underlying molecular mechanisms. The results indicated that higher frequency (≥19.5%) of CD44-/CD24- cells was associated with delayed postoperative breast cancer metastasis. Furthermore, CD44-/CD24- triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells spontaneously converted into CD44+/CD24- cancer stem cells (CSCs) with properties similar to CD44+/CD24- CSCs from primary human breast cancer cells and parental TNBC cells in terms of stemness marker expression, self-renewal, differentiation, tumorigenicity and lung metastasis in vitro and in NOD/SCID mice. RNA sequencing identified several differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in newly converted CSCs and RHBDL2, one of the DEGs, expression was up-regulated. More importantly, RHBDL2 silencing inhibited the YAP1/USP31/NF-κB signaling and attenuated spontaneous CD44-/CD24- cell conversion into CSCs and their mammosphere formation. These findings suggest that the frequency of CD44-/CD24- tumor cells and RHBDL2 may be valuable for prognosis of delayed breast cancer metastasis, particularly for TNBC.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#81572609)
- Caigang Liu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: The experimental protocol was approved by the Animal Research and Care Committee of China Medical University (Shenyang, China) and followed the Guidelines of the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals issued by the Chinese Council on Animal Research. Female BALB/c nude mice (6 weeks old) were obtained from Human Silaikejingda Laboratory Animals (Changsha, China) and housed in a specific pathogen-free facility with free access to autoclaved food and water. All surgery was performed under sodium pentobarbital anesthesia, and every effort was made to minimize suffering. The current study was approved by the Ethics Committee of all three hospital review board review boards ((Project identification code: Project identification code: 2018PS304K, date on 03/05/2018 2018PS304K, date on 03/05/2018))
Copyright
© 2021, Qiao et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Association of human breast cancer CD44-/CD24- cells with delayed distant metastasis
eLife 10:e65418.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65418
Further reading
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- Cancer Biology
Background:
Cervical adenocarcinoma (ADC) is more aggressive compared to other types of cervical cancer (CC), such as squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) and tumor heterogeneity are recognized as pivotal factors in cancer progression and therapy. However, the disparities in TIME and heterogeneity between ADC and SCC are poorly understood.
Methods:
We performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 11 samples of ADC tumor tissues, with other 4 SCC samples served as controls. The immunochemistry and multiplexed immunofluorescence were conducted to validate our findings.
Results:
Compared to SCC, ADC exhibited unique enrichments in several sub-clusters of epithelial cells with elevated stemness and hyper-malignant features, including the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster. ADC displayed a highly immunosuppressive environment characterized by the enrichment of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and tumor-promoting neutrophils. The Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster recruits Tregs via ALCAM-CD6 signaling, while Tregs reciprocally induce stemness in the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster through TGFβ signaling. Importantly, our study revealed that the Epi_10_CYSTM1 cluster could serve as a valuable predictor of lymph node metastasis for CC patients.
Conclusions:
This study highlights the significance of ADC-specific cell clusters in establishing a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment, ultimately contributing to the heightened aggressiveness and poorer prognosis of ADC compared to SCC.
Funding:
Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82002753; 82072882; 81500475) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2021JJ40324; 2022JJ70103).
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- Cancer Biology
Most human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are not infiltrated with cytotoxic T cells and are highly resistant to immunotherapy. Over 90% of PDAC have oncogenic KRAS mutations, and phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) are direct effectors of KRAS. Our previous study demonstrated that ablation of Pik3ca in KPC (KrasG12D; Trp53R172H; Pdx1-Cre) pancreatic cancer cells induced host T cells to infiltrate and completely eliminate the tumors in a syngeneic orthotopic implantation mouse model. Now, we show that implantation of Pik3ca−/− KPC (named αKO) cancer cells induces clonal enrichment of cytotoxic T cells infiltrating the pancreatic tumors. To identify potential molecules that can regulate the activity of these anti-tumor T cells, we conducted an in vivo genome-wide gene-deletion screen using αKO cells implanted in the mouse pancreas. The result shows that deletion of propionyl-CoA carboxylase subunit B gene (Pccb) in αKO cells (named p-αKO) leads to immune evasion, tumor progression, and death of host mice. Surprisingly, p-αKO tumors are still infiltrated with clonally enriched CD8+ T cells but they are inactive against tumor cells. However, blockade of PD-L1/PD1 interaction reactivated these clonally enriched T cells infiltrating p-αKO tumors, leading to slower tumor progression and improve survival of host mice. These results indicate that Pccb can modulate the activity of cytotoxic T cells infiltrating some pancreatic cancers and this understanding may lead to improvement in immunotherapy for this difficult-to-treat cancer.
