Epigenetic therapy to enhance therapeutic effects of PD-1 inhibition in therapy-resistant melanoma

xlomafota13 shared this article with you from Inoreader Epigenetic therapy to enhance therapeutic effects of PD-1 inhibition in therapy-resistant melanoma Via Melanoma Research - Published Ahead-of-Print Targeted therapy and immunotherapy have revolutionized the treatment of metastatic skin melanoma but around half of all patients develop resistance early or late during treatment. The situation is even worse for patients with metastatic uveal melanoma (UM). Here we hypothesized that the immunotherapy of therapy-resi stant skin melanoma or UM can be enhanced by epigenetic inhibitors. Cultured B16F10 cells and human UM cells were treated with the histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) entinostat or BETi JQ1. Entinostat-induced HLA expression and PD-L1, but JQ1 did not. A syngeneic mouse model carrying B16-F10 melanoma cells was treated with PD-1 and CTLA4 inhibitors, which was curative. Co-treatment with the bioavailable BETi iBET726 impaired the immunotherapy effect. Monotherapy of a B16-F10 mouse model with anti-PD-1 resulted in a moderate therapeutic effect that could be enhanced by entinostat. Mice carrying PD-L1 knockout B16-F10 cells were also sensitive to entinostat. This suggests HDAC inhibition and immunotherapy could work in concert. Indeed, co-cultures of UM with HLA-matched melanoma-specific tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) resulted in higher TIL-mediated melanoma killing when entinostat was added. Further exploration of combined immunotherapy and epigenetic therapy in metastatic melanoma resistant to PD-1 inhibition is warranted. * Present address: Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, 6 Verdun St, WA 6009, Nedlands, Perth, Australia. Received 21 July 2021 Accepted 23 September 2021 Supplemental Digital Content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's website, www.melanomaresearch.com. Correspondence to Jonas A. Nilsson, PhD, Sahlgrenska Center for Cancer Research, Box 425, University of Gothenburg, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden, Tel: +46 730 273039; e-mail: jonas.nilsson@perkins.org.au This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0(CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.