IL-18 and VEGF-A trigger type 2 innate lymphoid cell accumulation and pro-tumoral function in chronic myeloid leukemia

Haematologica. 2023 Sep 1;108(9):2396-2409. doi: 10.3324/haematol.2022.282140.

Abstract

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a hematologic malignancy associated to an unregulated growth of myeloid cells in bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB), characterized by the BCR-ABL1 translocation. Given the known cytokine impairment in the leukemic niche of CML, we investigated the impact of this microenvironmental dysregulation on innate lymphoid cells (ILC), whose role in cancer has recently emerged. Three ILC subsets are identified based on transcriptional profiles and cytokine secretion. We observed that interleukin 18 (IL-18) and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) are increased in CML patients' sera and that ILC2 are enriched in CML PB and BM. We found that IL-18 drives ILC2 proliferation and that CML ILC2 highly express CXCR4 and CXCR7 BM-homing receptors, potentially explaining their enrichment in PB and BM, respectively. Next, we showed that ILC2 are hyper-activated through a tumor-derived VEGF-Adependent mechanism, which leads to higher IL-13 secretion. In response to IL-13, leukemic cells increase their clonogenic capacity. Finally, we discovered that the pro-tumoral axis involving VEGF-A, IL-18 and ILC2 was disrupted upon tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment, normalizing the levels of all these players in CML patients responding to therapy. Overall, our study uncovers the involvement of ILC2 in CML progression, mediated by VEGF-A and IL-18.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Fusion Proteins, bcr-abl / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Immunity, Innate
  • Interleukin-13
  • Interleukin-18
  • Leukemia, Myelogenous, Chronic, BCR-ABL Positive* / pathology
  • Lymphocytes / metabolism
  • Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A*

Substances

  • Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A
  • Interleukin-18
  • Fusion Proteins, bcr-abl
  • Interleukin-13

Grants and funding

Funding: This work was supported by the SNSF PRIMA grant (PR00P3_179727) (to CJ), by the Dr Henri Dubois-Ferrière Dinu Lipatti Foundation (to ST), by ISREC PhD Scholarship (to BF), by AIRC IG 2021 – ID. 26037 project (to EM) and by Compagnia di San Paolo (2019.866) (to EM).