The Histone Deacetylase-8 (HDAC8) Selective Inhibitor PCI-34051 Decreases Interleukin-1 Beta Secretion in Vitro and Reduces Inflammation in Vivo
Authors: Balasubramanian Sriram , Steggerda Susanne , Sirisawad Mint , Schreeder Marshall , Doiron Luke , Buggy Joseph J 
Published: April 2020

Inhibitors of histone deacetylases (HDACs) which are currently in clinical testing for treating various cancers typically inhibit multiple isoforms of the 11-member HDAC family. We have developed an isoform-selective HDAC inhibitor, PCI-34051, that inhibits HDAC8 with a Ki of 10 nM and greater than 200-fold selectivity over other HDAC isoforms (Balasubramanian et al. (2008) Leukemia,22:1026–34). We have shown that PCI-34051 selectively induced apoptosis in cell lines derived from T-cell lymphomas and leukemias, but not in other tumor or normal cell types. Here we show that it potently inhibits the secretion of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 beta (IL-1b) in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated peripheral mononuclear blood cells (PBMC) and isolated monocytes. PCI-34051 inhibited IL-1b secretion (by 80% compared to control) from LPS-stimulated human PBMC with an IC50 of 0.6 uM, which is much lower than the growth inhibitory concentrations of 2.4–4 uM required in T-cell lymphomas. We found that PCI-34051 also inhibited the secretion of interleukin-18 (IL-18) to a similar extent as IL-1b, but secretion of other pro-inflammatory cytokines, including MIP-1b, MCP-1, TNFa, and IL-6, was inhibited to a smaller extent. Interestingly, IL-18, like IL-1b, is synthesized without a signal peptide, and also utilizes the same non-classical endosomal secretory pathway as IL-1b including cleavage of the pro-form by caspase-1. Thus, we theorized that the modulatory effect of PCI-34051 is likely to involve modulation of the post-translational secretory process. In accordance, we found that the IL-1b mRNA levels were reduced by only 20% compared to control, but the intracellular protein levels of the pro-form was increased by &gt;50% in primary monocytes after treatment with PCI-34051, indicating that the mechanism was due to inhibition of the processing from the pro- to the mature form of the cytokine. We showed that this was not due to a direct inhibition of caspase-1 or TACE (TNF-alpha converting enzyme), but is likely due to an as-yet unidentified substrate of HDAC8. In vivo, PCI-34051 inhibited ear swelling induced by oxazolone in a model of contact hypersensitivity in mice, and we showed that this was accompanied by a reduction in IL-1b at both the protein and mRNA levels. Based on this result, we examined the effect of PCI-34051 on IL-1b secretion in human keratinocytes, as well as in PBMC from psoriasis patients, and found that it could reduce IL-1b secretion in both. We found that PCI-34051 decreased IL-1b by 60% in LPS-stimulated PBMC from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, but the pan-HDAC inhibitors which were only weakly inhibitory to HDAC8 did not have this effect, indicating a specific role for HDAC8 in the secretory process. Finally, we found that in unstimulated PBMC from RA patients that had basal production of IL-1b that this could be decreased by 90% by treatment with PCI-34051. Taken together, these findings indicate that PCI-34051 is an active drug that could be useful for the treatment of T-cell lymphoma as well as for autoinflammatory diseases such as RA and psoriasis.