Although the role of the tumor microenvironment in the process of cancer progression has been extensively investigated, the contribution of different stromal components to tumor growth and/or evasion from immune surveillance is still only partially defined. In this study we analyzed fibroblasts derived from metastatic melanomas and provide evidence for their strong immunosuppressive activity. In coculture experiments, melanoma-derived fibroblasts sharply interfered with NK cell functions including cytotoxicity and cytokine production. Thus, both the IL-2-induced up-regulation of the surface expression of NKp44, NKp30, and DNAM-1 triggering receptors and the acquisition of cytolytic granules were inhibited in NK cells. This resulted in an impairment of the NK cell-mediated killing of melanoma target cells. Transwell cocultures and the use of specific inhibitors suggested that cell-to-cell contact was required for inducing DNAM-1 modulation. In contrast, modulation of NKp44 and NKp30 was due to PGE 2 released by fibroblasts during coculture. Normal skin fibroblasts could also partially affect NK cell phenotype and function. However, the inhibitory effect of tumor-derived fibroblasts was far stronger and directly correlated with their ability to produce PGE 2 either constitutively or upon induction by NK cells.activating receptors ͉ cytotoxicity ͉ tumor microenvironment

Natural killer (NK) cells play a key role in tumor immune surveillance. However, adoptive immunotherapy protocols using NK cells have shown limited clinical efficacy to date, possibly due to tumor escape mechanisms that inhibit NK cell function. In this study, we analyzed the effect of coculturing melanoma cells and NK cells on their phenotype and function. We found that melanoma cells inhibited the expression of major NK receptors that trigger their immune function, including NKp30, NKp44, and NKG2D, with consequent impairment of NK cellmediated cytolytic activity against various melanoma cell lines. This inhibitory effect was primarily mediated by indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). Together, our findings suggest that immunosuppressive barriers erected by tumors greatly hamper the antitumor activity of human NK cells, thereby favoring tumor outgrowth and progression. Cancer Res; 72(6); 1407-15. Ó2012 AACR.

Tryptophan (Trp) catabolism mediated by indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) plays a central role in the regulation of T-cell-mediated immune responses. In this study, we also demonstrate that natural killer (NK)-cell function can be influenced by IDO. Indeed, l-kynurenine, a Trp-derived catabolite resulting from IDO activity, was found to prevent the cytokine-mediated up-regulation of the expression and function of specific triggering receptors responsible for the induction of NK-cell-mediated killing. The effect of l-kynurenine appears to be restricted to NKp46 and NKG2D, while it does not affect other surface receptors such as NKp30 or CD16. As a consequence, l-kynurenine-treated NK cells display impaired ability to kill target cells recognized via NKp46 and NKG2D. Instead, they maintain the ability to kill targets, such as dendritic cells (DCs), that are mainly recognized via the NKp30 receptor. The effect of l-kynurenine, which is effective at both the transcriptional and the protein level, can be reverted, since NK cells were found to recover their functional competence after washing.

In certain infection sites or tumor tissues, the disruption of homeostasis can give rise to a hypoxic microenvironment, which, in turn, can alter the function of different immune cell types and favor the progression of the disease. Natural killer (NK) cells are directly involved in the elimination of virus-infected or transformed cells, however it is unknownwhether their function is affected by hypoxia or not. In this study, we show that NK cells adapt to a hypoxic environment by upregulating the hypoxia-inducible factor 1α. However, NK cells lose their ability to upregulate the surface expression of the major activating NK-cell receptors (NKp46, NKp30, NKp44, and NKG2D) in response to IL-2 (or other activating cytokines, including IL-15, IL-12, and IL-21). These altered phenotypic features correlate with reduced responses to triggering signals resulting in impaired capability of killing infected or tumor target cells. Remarkably, hypoxia does not significantly alter the surface density and the triggering function of the Fc-γ receptor CD16, thus allowing NK cells to maintain their capability of killing target cells via antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity. This finding offers an important clue for exploitation of NK cell in antibody-based immunotherapy of cancer. Keywords: ADCC · Hypoxia · NK cells · Tumor Escape · Tumor MicroenvironmentAdditional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site IntroductionAs a component of innate immunity, natural killer (NK) cells play an important role in the control of virus infections and in cancer immune surveillance [1][2][3][4][5]. They can kill a wide range of cells that, Correspondence: Prof. Lorenzo Moretta e-mail: lorenzomoretta@ospedale-gaslini.ge.it upon neoplastic transformation or virus infection, have downregulated major histocompatibility complex class I surface expression.To recognize their targets, NK cells use a complex array of activating receptors and/or coreceptors. These mainly include the natural cytotoxicity receptors (NCRs, i.e. NKp46, NKp30, and * These authors contributed equally to this work. * * These authors share senior authorship. [5,[11][12][13][14], there are still many obstacles for the effective use of these cells in immunotherapy. Both tumors and viruses have developed different escape mechanisms to avoid NK-cell immunosurveillance. For example, certain viruses can shape the expression profile of various NK-receptor ligands in infected cells [15]. Similarly, tumor cells may shed from the surface certain NKG2D ligands thus avoiding NK-cell-mediated attack [16]. In addition, several lines of evidence indicate that the tumor microenvironment may impact the real ability of NK cells to clear pathologic cells [17][18][19][20][21][22]. Indeed, while cytokines such as IL-2, IL-15, IL-12, and IL-21 can enhance NK-cell function, other factors induced at the tumor site, such as IDO, PGE 2 , and TGF-β, or even the direct interaction with tumor cells or tumor-associated stromal cells, may impai...

Herpes simplex viruses (HSVs) are able to hijack the host-cell IB kinase (IKK)/NF-B pathway, which regulates critical cell functions from apoptosis to inflammatory responses; however, the molecular mechanisms involved and the outcome of the signaling dysregulation on the host-virus interaction are mostly unknown. Here we show that in human keratinocytes HSV-1 attains a sophisticated control of the IKK/NF-B pathway, inducing two distinct temporally controlled waves of IKK activity and disrupting the NF-B autoregulatory mechanism. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation we demonstrate that dysregulation of the NF-B-response is mediated by a virus-induced block of NF-B recruitment to the promoter of the IB␣ gene, encoding the main NF-B-inhibitor. We also show that HSV-1 redirects NF-B recruitment to the promoter of ICP0, an immediate-early viral gene with a key role in promoting virus replication. The results reveal a new level of control of cellular functions by invading viruses and suggest that persistent NF-B activation in HSV-1-infected cells, rather than being a host response to the virus, may play a positive role in promoting efficient viral replication.Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) 4 represents a prototype for understanding the fundamental replication mechanisms of herpesviruses, a large family of medically important double-stranded DNA viruses. As other members of the family, HSV-1 can establish productive and latent infections (1). During productive infection HSV-1 efficiently redirects the host transcriptional machinery to express its own genes in a tightly regulated temporal cascade, consisting of the sequential expression of three gene classes: the immediate-early (IE), delayedearly (DE) and late (L) genes. The five IE genes are expressed shortly after entry into the host cell, and the resulting IE proteins (infected cell proteins ICP-0, -4, -22, -27, and -47) are essential for the subsequent temporally controlled expression of DE genes, the majority of which encode proteins involved in viral DNA replication, as well as of later L genes, which encode predominantly structural proteins. In particular, the multifunctional phosphoprotein ICP0 acts as a strong activator of all classes of HSV-1 genes, as well as of other eukaryotic genes (1). The molecular mechanism responsible for ICP0 transactivating activity is not yet understood. No specific DNA-binding sequence for ICP0 could be identified, and the transactivating activity seems to be dependent on one or more of the different functions of the ICP0 protein (2). The facts that ICP0-negative mutants grow poorly in most tissue systems and are reactivation-impaired indicate that adequate ICP0 activity confers a growth advantage and is essential to promote initiation of the lyticphase transcriptional events (1).Several distinct cis-acting elements are important for ICP0 expression during productive infection (3). In addition to the transactivating activity of the virion VP16 protein-induced complex, ICP0 expression can be modulated by a variety of host-trans...

Experimental and clinical data suggest that tumours harbour a cell population retaining stem cell characteristics that can drive tumorigenesis. CD133 is considered an important cancer stem cells (CSC)-associated marker. In a large variety of human malignancies, including melanoma, CD133(+) cells have been reported to comprise CSC. In this study, we show that melanoma cell lines are highly heterogeneous for the expression of several stem cell-associated markers including CD133, c-kit/CD117 and p75 neurotrophin receptor/CD271. Since no information is available on the ability of NK cells to recognize and lyse melanoma stem cells, we assessed whether melanoma cell lines, characterized by stem cell-like features, were susceptible to lysis by IL-2-activated NK cells. We show that activated NK cells efficiently kill malignant melanoma cell lines that were enriched in putative CSC by the use of different selection methods (i.e. CD133 expression, radioresistance or the ability to form melanospheres in stem cell-supportive medium). NK cell-mediated recognition and lysis of melanoma cells involved different combinations of activating NK receptors. Since CSC have been reported to be both drug resistant and radioresistant, our present data suggest that NK-based adoptive immunotherapy could represent a novel therapeutic approach to possibly eradicate metastatic melanoma.

Hypoxia, which characterizes most tumor tissues, can alter the function of different immune cell types, favoring tumor escape mechanisms. In this study, we show that hypoxia profoundly acts on NK cells by influencing their transcriptome, affecting their immunoregulatory functions, and changing the chemotactic responses of different NK cell subsets. Exposure of human peripheral blood NK cells to hypoxia for 16 or 96 h caused significant changes in the expression of 729 or 1,100 genes, respectively. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis demonstrated that these changes followed a consensus hypoxia transcriptional profile. As assessed by Gene Ontology annotation, hypoxia-targeted genes were implicated in several biological processes: metabolism, cell cycle, differentiation, apoptosis, cell stress, and cytoskeleton organization. The hypoxic transcriptome also showed changes in genes with immunological relevance including those coding for proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and chemokine-receptors. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis confirmed the modulation of several immune-related genes, prompting further immunophenotypic and functional studies. Multiplex ELISA demonstrated that hypoxia could variably reduce NK cell ability to release IFNγ, TNFα, GM-CSF, CCL3, and CCL5 following PMA+Ionomycin or IL15+IL18 stimulation, while it poorly affected the response to IL12+IL18. Cytofluorimetric analysis showed that hypoxia could influence NK chemokine receptor pattern by sustaining the expression of CCR7 and CXCR4. Remarkably, this effect occurred selectively (CCR7) or preferentially (CXCR4) on CD56bright NK cells, which indeed showed higher chemotaxis to CCL19, CCL21, or CXCL12. Collectively, our data suggest that the hypoxic environment may profoundly influence the nature of the NK cell infiltrate and its effects on immune-mediated responses within tumor tissues.

During the past few years, a number of studies reported that different melanoma cell lines could be extensively lysed in vitro by IL-2-activated NK cells at appropriate effector/target ratios. Here, we show, by histological evaluation of different melanoma lesions, that NK/target-cell ratios compatible with those allowing efficient melanoma cell killing in vitro are hardly reached at the tumor site. We then investigated the outcome of cocultures established at low NK/melanoma cell ratios. After initial NK-mediated lysis, residual melanoma cells acquired resistance to IL-2-activated NK cells. This reflected primarily an increased expression, on melanoma cells, of classical and nonclassical HLA class I molecules, accompanied by a partial downregulation of NKG2D-ligands, and was dependent on NK-mediated IFN-γ release. Consistently, melanoma lesions showed a higher HLA class I expression on tumor cells that were proximal to infiltrating NK cells. In long-term cocultures, the "protective phenotype" acquired by melanoma cells was lost over time. However, this phenomenon was counteracted by downregulation of relevant activating receptors in cocultured NK cells. Analysis of different NK-cell-activating cytokines indicated that IL-15 can partially overcome this novel tumor escape mechanism suggesting that IL-15, rather than IL-2, may be eligible for NK-cell-based immunotherapy.