Tumor-intrinsic CDC42BPB confers resistance to anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade in breast cancer

Abstract

Immune checkpoint blockade has been used to treat breast cancer, but the clinical responses remain relatively poor. We have used the CRISPR-Cas9 kinome knockout library consisting of 763 kinase genes to identify tumor-intrinsic kinases conferring resistance to anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade. We have identified the CDC42BPB kinase as a potential target to overcome the resistance to anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. We found that CDC42BPB is highly expressed in breast cancer patients who are non-responsive to immunotherapy. Furthermore, a small molecule pharmacological inhibitor, BDP5290, which targets CDC42BPB, synergized with anti-PD-1 and enhanced tumor cell killing by promoting T-cell proliferation in both in-vitro and in-vivo assays. Moreover, anti-PD-1 resistant breast cancer cells showed higher expression of CDC42BPB, and its inhibition rendered the resistant cells more susceptible to T-cell killing in the presence of anti-PD-1. We also found that CDC42BPB phosphorylated AURKA, which in turn upregulated PD-L1 through cMYC. Our results have revealed a robust link between tumor-intrinsic kinase and immunotherapy resistance and provided a rationale for a unique combination therapy of CDC42BPB inhibition and anti-PD-1 immunotherapy for breast cancer.