Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

Improving radiotherapy in immunosuppressive microenvironments by targeting complement receptor C5aR1. The Journal of clinical investigation Beach, C., MacLean, D., Majorova, D., Melemenidis, S., Nambiar, D. K., Kim, R. K., Valbuena, G. N., Guglietta, S., Krieg, C., Darvish-Damavandi, M., Suwa, T., Easton, A., Hillson, L. V., McCulloch, A. K., McMahon, R. K., Pennel, K., Edwards, J., O'Cathail, S. M., Roxburgh, C. S., Domingo, E., Moon, E. J., Jiang, D., Jiang, Y., Zhang, Q., Koong, A. C., Woodruff, T. M., Graves, E. E., Maughan, T., Buczacki, S. J., Stucki, M., Le, Q. T., Leedham, S. J., Giaccia, A. J., Olcina, M. M. 2023

Abstract

An immunosuppressive microenvironment causes poor tumour T-cell infiltration and is associated with reduced patient overall survival in colorectal cancer. How to improve treatment responses in these tumours is still a challenge. Using an integrated screening approach to identify cancer-specific vulnerabilities, we identified complement receptor C5aR1 as a druggable target which when inhibited improved radiotherapy even in tumours displaying immunosuppressive features and poor CD8+ T-cell infiltration. While C5aR1 is well-known for its role in the immune compartment, we found that C5aR1 is also robustly expressed on malignant epithelial cells, highlighting potential tumour-cell specific functions. C5aR1 targeting resulted in increased NF-kB-dependent apoptosis specifically in tumours and not normal tissues; indicating that in malignant cells, C5aR1 primarily regulated cell fate. Collectively, these data revealed that increased complement gene expression is part of the stress response mounted by irradiated tumours and that targeting C5aR1 could improve radiotherapy even in tumours displaying immunosuppressive features.

View details for DOI 10.1172/JCI168277

View details for PubMedID 37824211