PD-L1 induces epithelial mesenchymal transition in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells through activation PI3K/AKT pathway.

PD-L1 induces epithelial mesenchymal transition in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells through activation PI3K/AKT pathway. Oncol Res. 2019 Apr 12;: Authors: Fei Z, Deng Z, Zhou L, Li K, Xia X, Xie R Abstract Nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) is a malignant epithelial carcinoma of the head and neck. Cancer therapy targeting programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) or programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) is of revolutionary. However, the tumorigenic mechanism of PD-L1 was not yet clear in NPC. Here we demonstrated an oncogenic role of PD-L1 via activating PI3K/AKT in NPC cells. PD-L1 overexpression was frequently detected in NPC biopsies and cell lines by qRT-PCR. PD-L1 overexpression and knockdown demonstrated that PD-L1 promoted NPC cellsinvasion and metastasis in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, PD-L1 prominently activated epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) process in a PI3K/AKT-dependent manner. Taken together, we found that PD-L1 overexpression confers NPC cell malignancy and aggressiveness via activating the downstream PI3K/AKT signaling. Thus, these results provide a basis for diagnosis and treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. PMID: 30982497 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Oncology Research - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Oncol Res Source Type: research