Immune checkpoint B7-H3 is a therapeutic vulnerability in prostate cancer harboring PTEN and TP53 deficiencies

Abstract

Checkpoint immunotherapy has yielded meaningful responses across many cancers but has shown modest efficacy in advanced prostate cancer. B7 homolog 3 protein (B7-H3/ CD276 ) is an immune checkpoint molecule and has emerged as a promising therapeutic target. However, much remains to be understood regarding B7-H3’s role in cancer progression, predictive biomarkers for B7-H3–targeted therapy, and combinatorial strategies. Our multi-omics analyses identified B7-H3 as one of the most abundant immune checkpoints in prostate tumors containing PTEN and TP53 genetic inactivation. Here, we sought in vivo genetic evidence for, and mechanistic understanding of, the role of B7-H3 in PTEN/TP53- deficient prostate cancer. We found that loss of PTEN and TP53 induced B7-H3 expression by activating transcriptional factor Sp1. Prostate-specific deletion of Cd276 resulted in delayed tumor progression and reversed the suppression of tumor-infiltrating T cells and NK cells in Pten/Trp53 genetically engineered mouse models. Furthermore, we tested the efficacy of the B7-H3 inhibitor in preclinical models of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). We demonstrated that enriched regulatory T cells and elevated programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in myeloid cells hinder the therapeutic efficacy of B7-H3 inhibition in prostate tumors. Last, we showed that B7-H3 inhibition combined with blockade of PD-L1 or cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) achieved durable antitumor effects and had curative potential in a PTEN/TP53 -deficient CRPC model. Given that B7-H3–targeted therapies have been evaluated in early clinical trials, our studies provide insights into the potential of biomarker-driven combinatorial immunotherapy targeting B7-H3 in prostate cancer, among other malignancies.