Abstract
Background
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a class of malignant tumors originating from bile duct epithelial cells. Due to difficult early diagnosis and limited treatment, the prognosis of CCA is extremely poor. BMI1 is dysregulated in many human malignancies. However, the prognostic significance and oncogenic role of BMI1 in cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) are not well elucidated.
Methods
In the present study, we investigated its clinical importance and the potential mechanisms in the progression of CCA. We detected BMI1 expression in a large CCA cohort. We demonstrated that BMI1 was substantially upregulated in CCA tissues and was identified as an independent prognostic biomarker of CCA. Moreover, overexpression of BMI1 promoted CCA proliferation, migration, and invasion. And BMI1 knockdown could inhibit proliferation and metastases of CCA in vitro and in vitro/vivo validation. Interestingly, we found that CCA-derived exosomes contain BMI1 proteins, which can transfer BMI1 between CCA cells. The unique BMI1-containing exosomes promote CCA proliferation and metastasis through autocrine/paracrine mechanisms. In addition, we demonstrated that BMI1 inhibits CD8+T cell-recruiting chemokines by promoting repressive H2A ubiquitination in CCA cells.
Conclusions
BMI1 is an unfavorable prognostic biomarker of CCA. Our data depict a novel function of BMI1 in CCA tumorigenesis and metastasis mediated by exosomes. Besides, BMI1 inhibition may augment immune checkpoint blockade to inhibit tumor progression by activating cell-intrinsic immunity of CCA.
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Availability of data and materials
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- CCA:
-
Cholangiocarcinoma
- iCCA:
-
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma
- pCCA:
-
Perihilar cholangiocarcinoma
- dCCA:
-
Distal cholangiocarcinoma
- TMA:
-
Tissue microarray
- IHC:
-
Immunohistochemistry
- qRT-PCR:
-
Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction
- WB:
-
Western blot
- IHC:
-
Immunohistochemistry
- ELISA:
-
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays
- ChIP-qPCR:
-
Chromatin immunoprecipitation-qPCR
- OS:
-
Overall survival rate
- DMEM:
-
Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium
- FBS:
-
Fetal bovine serum
- SDS-PAGE:
-
Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis
- PVDF:
-
Polyvinylidene difluoride
- PMSF:
-
Phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride
- PBS:
-
Phosphate buffer saline
- CCK-8:
-
Cell counting kit-8
- DMSO:
-
Dimethyl sulfoxide
- CM:
-
Conditioned medium
- BMI1:
-
B-cell-specific Moloney leukemia virus insertion site 1
- E-cad:
-
E-cadherin
- N-cad:
-
N-cadherin
- EMT:
-
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition
- MVBs:
-
Multivesicular bodies
- shRNA:
-
Short hairpin RNA
- TNM:
-
Tumor–node–metastasis
- rhBMI1:
-
Recombinant human BMI1
- exoBMI1:
-
Exosomal BMI1
- CD8A:
-
CD8 antigen
- CCL5:
-
C–C motif chemokine ligand 5
- CXCL9:
-
C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 9
- PD1:
-
Programmed cell death protein 1
- ICB:
-
Immune checkpoint blocking
- ICI:
-
Immune checkpoint inhibitors
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Xiaoqing Yang from the Department of Pathology, the Qianfoshan Hospital of Shandong University, for evaluating the IHC results and distinguish different cell types in the HE staining.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 81900728, 82072676, 82172791), Shandong Province Natural Science Foundation (Grant nos. ZR2019MH008, ZR2020MH238), Shandong Province Key R&D Program (Major Scientific Innovation Projects, 2021CXGC011105), Shandong Medical and Health Technology Development Project (Grant no. 2018WSB20002), Clinical Research Foundation of Shandong University (Grant no. 2020SDUCRCA018), Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province (Grant no. 2019GSF108254). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and manuscript writing.
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ZL, CH, LJ, YW, and JL performed the experiments. ZL designed the experiments and wrote the paper. ZL, LZ, KL, and BQ collected the clinical samples. XL, YW, WM, TC, and AS perform the follow-up. ZL, CH, and LZ participated in data analysis and interpretation. XZ and YX designed the study, YX and ZZ contributed to study supervision and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, and written informed consent was obtained from each patient. The Laboratory Animal Care and Use Committees of the hospital approved all experimental procedures.
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Liu, Z., Hu, C., Zheng, L. et al. BMI1 promotes cholangiocarcinoma progression and correlates with antitumor immunity in an exosome-dependent manner. Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 79, 469 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-022-04500-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-022-04500-1