What is it about?
Despite the remarkable clinical success of immunotherapies in a subset of cancer patients, many fail to respond and exhibit resistance. The “self-eating” machinery possessed by cancer cells, called autophagy, has been attributed to this resistance. Employing several preclinical cancer models, we found that inhibiting an autophagy regulator, PIKfyve, in cancer cells restored a protein complex called the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) that is essential for the action of immunotherapies. Consequently, inhibition of PIKfyve delayed tumor growth with increased immune effector cells in tumors and significantly improved efficacy of various immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint blockade, adoptive cell therapy, and therapeutic vaccine.
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Why is it important?
Our findings merit further clinical development of PIKfyve inhibition in combination with various immunotherapies to improve patient survival.
Perspectives
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This page is a summary of: Targeting the lipid kinase PIKfyve upregulates surface expression of MHC class I to augment cancer immunotherapy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2314416120.
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