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Re-purposing the pro-senescence properties of doxorubicin to introduce immunotherapy in breast cancer brain metastasis

  • Rebeca Uceda-Castro
  • , Andreia S. Margarido
  • , Lesley Cornet
  • , Serena Vegna
  • , Kerstin Hahn
  • , Ji Ying Song
  • , Diana A. Putavet
  • , Mariska van Geldorp
  • , Ceren H. Çitirikkaya
  • , Peter L.J. de Keizer
  • , Leon C. ter Beek
  • , Gerben R. Borst
  • , Leila Akkari
  • , Olaf van Tellingen
  • , Marike L.D. Broekman
  • , Claire Vennin*
  • , Jacco van Rheenen
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

An increasing number of breast cancer patients develop brain metastases (BM). Standard-of-care treatments are largely inefficient, and breast cancer brain metastasis (BCBM) patients are considered untreatable. Immunotherapies are not successfully employed in BCBM, in part because breast cancer is a “cold” tumor and also because the brain tissue has a unique immune landscape. Here, we generate and characterize immunocompetent models of BCBM derived from PyMT and Neu mammary tumors to test how harnessing the pro-senescence properties of doxorubicin can be used to prime the specific immune BCBM microenvironment. We reveal that BCBM senescent cells, induced by doxorubicin, trigger the recruitment of PD1-expressing T cells to the brain. Importantly, we demonstrate that induction of senescence with doxorubicin improves the efficacy of immunotherapy with anti-PD1 in BCBM in a CD8 T cell-dependent manner, thereby providing an optimized strategy to introduce immune-based treatments in this lethal disease. In addition, our BCBM models can be used for pre-clinical testing of other therapeutic strategies in the future.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100821
Pages (from-to)1-28
JournalCell reports medicine
Volume3
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Nov 2022

Keywords

  • breast cancer brain metastasis
  • doxorubicin
  • immune checkpoint blockade
  • mouse models
  • senescence
  • T cells
  • Humans
  • Tumor Microenvironment
  • Immunotherapy
  • Female
  • Doxorubicin/pharmacology
  • Breast Neoplasms/drug therapy
  • Brain Neoplasms/drug therapy

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