Tumor cells versus host immune cells: whose PD-L1 contributes to PD-1/PD-L1 blockade mediated cancer immunotherapy?

• Main Authors: Fei Tang, Pan Zheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2018-05-01
• Series: Cell & Bioscience
• Subjects: PD-L1; PD-1/PD-L1 blockade; Cancer immunotherapy; Host immune cells; Immune evasion; Immune therapeutic effect
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13578-018-0232-4

Abstract Antibody blockade of the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway has elicited durable antitumor responses in the therapy of a broad spectrum of cancers. PD-L1 is constitutively expressed in certain tumors and host immune cells, and its expression can be induced or maintained by many factors. The expression of PD-L1 on tumor tissues has been reported to be positively correlated with the efficacy of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy in patients. However, multiple clinical trials indicate that patients with PD-L1-negative tumors also respond to this blockade therapy, which suggests the potential contribution of PD-L1 from host immune cells. Recently, six articles independently evaluated and verified the contributions of PD-L1 from tumor versus non-tumor cells in various mouse tumor models. These studies confirmed that PD-L1 on either tumor cells or host immune cells contributes to tumor escape, and the relative contributions of PD-L1 on these cells seem to be context-dependent. While both tumor- and host-derived PD-L1 can play critical roles in immune suppression, differences in tumor immunogenicity appear to underlie their relative importance. Notably, these reports highlight the essential roles of PD-L1 from host myeloid cells in negatively regulating T cell activation and limiting T cell trafficking. Therefore, comprehensive evaluating the global PD-L1 expression, rather than monitoring PD-L1 expression on tumor cells alone, should be a more accurate way for predicting responses in PD-1/PD-L1 blockade therapy in cancer patients.