Abstract PO2-24-11: Hedgehog signaling influences tumor immunogenicity by the modulation of T cell populations in triple-negative breast cancer
Authors: Swain Courtney , Hinshaw Dominique , Alsheikh Heba , Metge Brandon , Shevde-Samant Lalita 
Published: May 2024

Breast cancer is becoming more prevalent as it now makes up 30% of all new cancer cases yearly for U.S. women. Additionally, highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) presents as immunologically “cold” tumors characterized by limited infiltration of anti-tumorigenic lymphocytes and the promotion of immunosuppressive cell populations. Therefore, it is essential to consider possible combinational therapies in treating primary tumors and in preventing metastases and recurrence. In the breast tumor microenvironment (TME), the presence and activity of regulatory T cells (Tregs) have been associated with poorer prognoses in breast cancer due to their ability to promote the progression of tumor growth and metastasis. Our group has extensively studied how the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway can modulate the aggressiveness and the immune portfolio of the mammary TME, and we have recently reported the role of this pathway in regulating Treg activity and abundance. We have discovered that Hh inhibition can influence Treg-to-Th17 plasticity, promoting Tregs into a pro-inflammatory Th17-like phenotype (Tr17). As Tregs are highly influential to other immune populations of the TME, it is imperative to determine what phenotypic changes are induced in other T cell populations after systemic Hh inhibition in the mammary TME.

We hypothesize that systemic Hh inhibition reshapes the tumor-immune microenvironment to be tumor-eradicating by influencing key immune populations of the mammary TME. Therefore, we further investigated how CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are influenced by systemic Hh blockade in a mammary carcinoma mouse model using single-cell RNA-Sequencing (scRNA-Seq) and R programming for data analyses and visualization. We sought to assess transcriptomic changes in tumoral T cells and to interpret how these elicited changes may be influencing the immunogenicity of the primary tumor. In these investigations, we found that systemic Hh inhibition modified the abundance and activation profile of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell populations within the primary tumor.

As the infiltration and persistence of certain T cell subsets within the TME can influence tumor growth, dictate tumor recurrence, and contribute to immunotherapy responsiveness, it is essential to determine the mechanisms that modulates tumoral CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the mammary TME. These studies will expand on the mechanism by which Hh signaling modulates mammary tumorigenesis systemically. This comprehensive work will also contribute to understanding the role of Hh signaling in modulating T cell subsets and inform future studies for innovative combinational therapeutic strategies to treat highly aggressive TNBC.

Citation Format: Courtney Swain, Dominique Hinshaw, Heba Alsheikh, Brandon Metge, Lalita Shevde-Samant. Hedgehog signaling influences tumor immunogenicity by the modulation of T cell populations in triple-negative breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO2-24-11.