作者
Heng Lin,Ilona Kryczek,Shasha Li,Michael F. Green,Alicia Ali,Reema Hamasha,Shuang Wei,Linda Vatan,Wojciech Szeliga,Sara Grove,Xiong Li,Jing Li,Yu Wang,Yijian Yan,Jae Sue Choi,Gao-Peng Li,Yingjie Bian,Ying Xu,Jiajia Zhou,Jiali Yu,Hou-Jun Xia,Weimin Wang,Ajjai Alva,Arul M. Chinnaiyan,Marcin Cieslik,Weiping Zou
摘要
Immunotherapy induces durable clinical responses in a fraction of patients with cancer. However, therapeutic resistance poses a major challenge to current immunotherapies. Here, we identify that expression of tumor stanniocalcin 1 (STC1) correlates with immunotherapy efficacy and is negatively associated with patient survival across diverse cancer types. Gain- and loss-of-function experiments demonstrate that tumor STC1 supports tumor progression and enables tumor resistance to checkpoint blockade in murine tumor models. Mechanistically, tumor STC1 interacts with calreticulin (CRT), an "eat-me" signal, and minimizes CRT membrane exposure, thereby abrogating membrane CRT-directed phagocytosis by antigen-presenting cells (APCs), including macrophages and dendritic cells. Consequently, this impairs APC capacity of antigen presentation and T cell activation. Thus, tumor STC1 inhibits APC phagocytosis and contributes to tumor immune evasion and immunotherapy resistance. We suggest that STC1 is a previously unappreciated phagocytosis checkpoint and targeting STC1 and its interaction with CRT may sensitize to cancer immunotherapy.