Co-expression of PD-L1 and p-AKT is associated with poor prognosis in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma via PD-1/PD-L1 axis activating intracellular AKT/mTOR pathway in tumor cells

Ling Dong, Huijuan Lv, Wei Li, Zheng Song, Lanfang Li, Shiyong Zhou, Lihua Qiu, Zhengzi Qian, Xianming Liu, Lixia Feng, Bin Meng, Kai Fu, Xi Wang, Qiang Pan-Hammarström, Ping Wang, Xianhuo Wang, Huilai Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

54 Scopus citations

Abstract

Programmed death-1 (PD-1) /programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) engagement usually leads to diminished antitumor T-cell responses, which mediates the immune escape of tumor cells. However, little is known whether PD-1/PD-L1 could directly activates intracellular oncogenic signaling pathways in tumor cells. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether intracellular AKT/mTOR signaling could be directly activated by PD-1/PD-L1 during the malignant progression in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Detection of the expression of PD-L1 and p-AKT by immunohistochemistry (IHC) showed that both proteins were overexpressed in 54% and 48% DLBCL cases, respectively. Spearman test showed that PD-L1 expression was correlated with p-AKT expression (R=0.244, χ2=5.962; P=0.017) and the expression of PD-L1 and p-AKT were also correlated with clinic-pathological characteristics. In addition, survival analysis showed that DLBCL patients who co-expressed PDL1 and p-AKT had significantly poorer outcome than patients with single positive or both negative expression (P<0.05). In vitro, total PD-L1 and membrane PD-L1 (mPD-L1) proteins were overexpressed in five DLBCL cell lines by western blot and flow cytometry. We observed that AKT/mTOR pathway was activated in DLBCL cells after stimulated with human recombination PD-1/Fc. Taken together, these results suggested that the combination of PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies and AKT/mTOR inhibitor might be a promising and novel therapeutic approach for DLBCL in the future.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)33350-33362
Number of pages13
JournalOncotarget
Volume7
Issue number22
DOIs
StatePublished - May 31 2016

Keywords

  • AKT/mTOR signaling
  • DLBCL
  • PD-1
  • PD-L1
  • p-AKT

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Oncology

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