IL-15 Trans-Signaling with the Superagonist RLI Promotes Effector/Memory CD8+ T Cell Responses and Enhances Antitumor Activity of PD-1 Antagonists.

Tumors with the help of the surrounding environment facilitate the immune suppression in patients, and immunotherapy can counteract this inhibition. Among immunotherapeutic strategies, the immunostimulatory cytokine IL-15 could represent a serious candidate for the reactivation of antitumor immunity. However, exogenous IL-15 may have a limited impact on patients with cancer due to its dependency on IL-15Rα frequently downregulated in cancer patients. In this work, we studied the antitumor activity of the IL-15 superagonist receptor-linker-IL-15 (RLI), designed to bypass the need of endogenous IL-15Rα. RLI consists of human IL-15 covalently linked to the human IL-15Rα sushi(+) domain. In a mouse model of colorectal carcinoma, RLI as a stand-alone treatment could limit tumor outgrowth only when initiated at an early time of tumor development. At a later time, RLI was not effective, coinciding with the strong accumulation of terminally exhausted programmed cell death-1 (PD-1)(high) T cell Ig mucin-3(+) CD8(+) T cells, suggesting that RLI was not able to reactivate terminally exhausted CD8(+) T cells. Combination with PD-1 blocking Ab showed synergistic activity with RLI, but not with IL-15. RLI could induce a greater accumulation of memory CD8(+) T cells and a stronger effector function in comparison with IL-15. Ex vivo stimulation of tumor-infiltrated lymphocytes from 16 patients with renal cell carcinoma demonstrated 56% of a strong tumor-infiltrated lymphocyte reactivation with the combination anti-PD-1/RLI compared with 43 and 6% with RLI or anti-PD-1, respectively. Altogether, this work provides evidence that the sushi-IL-15Rα/IL-15 fusion protein RLI enhances antitumor activity of anti-PD-1 treatment and is a promising approach to stimulate host immunity.

MiR-423-5p prevents MALAT1-mediated proliferation and metastasis in prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND: The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), MALAT1, plays a key role in the development of different cancers, and its expression is associated with worse prognosis in patients. However, its mechanism of action and its regulation are not well known in prostate cancer (PCa). A general mechanism of action of lncRNAs is their interaction with other epigenetic regulators including microRNAs (miRNAs). METHODS: Using lentiviral stable miRNA transfection together with cell biology functional assays and gene expression/target analysis, we investigated the interaction between MALAT1 and miR-423-5p, defined as a target with in silico prediction analysis, in PCa. RESULTS: Through bioinformatic analysis of data available from TCGA, we have found that MALAT1 expression correlates with high Gleason grade, metastasis occurrence, and reduced survival in PCa patients. These findings were validated on a TMA of PCa showing a significant correlation between MALAT1 expression with both stage and grading. We report that, in PCa cells, MALAT1 expression and activity is regulated by miR-423-5p that binds MALAT1, downregulates its expression and inhibits its activity in promoting proliferation, migration, and invasion. Using NanoString analysis, we unraveled downstream cell pathways that were affected by miR-423-5p expression and MALAT1 downregulation and identified several alterations in genes that are involved in metastatic response and angiogenic pathways. In addition, we showed that the overexpression of miR-423-5p increases survival and decreases metastases formation in a xenograft mouse model. CONCLUSIONS: We provide evidence on the role of MALAT1 in PCa tumorigenesis and progression. Also, we identify a direct interaction between miR-423-5p and MALAT1, which results in the suppression of MALAT1 action in PCa.