bims-tuchim 2021-11-28 papers

Issue of 2021‒11‒28
three papers selected by
Philipp Albrecht
Friedrich Schiller University

Cell Commun Signal. 2021 Nov 24. 19(1): 117

Immune checkpoint inhibition for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: limitations and prospects: a systematic review.

Pancreatic cancer is an extremely malignant tumor with the lowest 5-year survival rate among all tumors. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), as the most common pathological subtype of pancreatic cancer, usually has poor therapeutic results. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can relieve failure of the tumor-killing effect of immune effector cells caused by immune checkpoints. Therefore, they have been used as a novel treatment for many solid tumors. However, PDAC is not sensitive to monotherapy with ICIs, which might be related to the inhibitory immune microenvironment of pancreatic cancer. Therefore, the way to improve the microenvironment has raised a heated discussion in recent years. Here, we elaborate on the relationship between different immune cellular components in this environment, list some current preclinical or clinical attempts to enhance the efficacy of ICIs by targeting the inhibitory tumor microenvironment of PDAC or in combination with other therapies. Such information offers a better understanding of the sophisticated tumor-microenvironment interactions, also providing insights on therapeutic guidance of PDAC targeting. Video Abstract.

Keywords: Immune checkpoint inhibitors; Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma; Tumor microenvironment

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12964-021-00789-w

Biomicrofluidics. 2021 Dec;15(6): 061503

From cell spheroids to vascularized cancer organoids: Microfluidic tumor-on-a-chip models for preclinical drug evaluations.

Yue Wu, Yuyuan Zhou, Xiaochen Qin, Yaling Liu.

Chemotherapy is one of the most effective cancer treatments. Starting from the discovery of new molecular entities, it usually takes about 10 years and 2 billion U.S. dollars to bring an effective anti-cancer drug from the benchtop to patients. Due to the physiological differences between animal models and humans, more than 90% of drug candidates failed in phase I clinical trials. Thus, a more efficient drug screening system to identify feasible compounds and pre-exclude less promising drug candidates is strongly desired. For their capability to accurately construct in vitro tumor models derived from human cells to reproduce pathological and physiological processes, microfluidic tumor chips are reliable platforms for preclinical drug screening, personalized medicine, and fundamental oncology research. This review summarizes the recent progress of the microfluidic tumor chip and highlights tumor vascularization strategies. In addition, promising imaging modalities for enhancing data acquisition and machine learning-based image analysis methods to accurately quantify the dynamics of tumor spheroids are introduced. It is believed that the microfluidic tumor chip will serve as a high-throughput, biomimetic, and multi-sensor integrated system for efficient preclinical drug evaluation in the future.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0062697

Cell Death Dis. 2021 Nov 26. 12(12): 1106

Reciprocal regulation of LOXL2 and HIF1α drives the Warburg effect to support pancreatic cancer aggressiveness.

Rongkun Li, Hengchao Li, Lili Zhu, Xiaoxin Zhang, Dejun Liu, Qing Li, Bo Ni, Lipeng Hu, Zhigang Zhang, Yanli Zhang, Xu Wang, Shu-Heng Jiang.

Hypoxic microenvironment is common in solid tumors, particularly in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The Warburg effect is known to facilitate cancer aggressiveness and has long been linked to hypoxia, yet the underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. In this study, we identify that lysyl oxidase-like 2 (LOXL2) is a hypoxia-responsive gene and is essential for the Warburg effect in PDAC. LOXL2 stabilizes hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α) from prolyl hydroxylase (PHD)-dependent hydroxylation via hydrogen peroxide generation, thereby facilitating the transcription of multiple glycolytic genes. Therefore, a positive feedback loop exists between LOXL2 and HIF1α that facilitates glycolytic metabolism under hypoxia. Moreover, LOXL2 couples the Warburg effect to tumor growth and metastasis in PDAC. Hijacking glycolysis largely compromises LOXL2-induced oncogenic activities. Collectively, our results identify a hitherto unknown hypoxia-LOXL2-HIF1α axis in regulating the Warburg effect and provide an intriguing drug target for PDAC therapy.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-021-04391-3