Breast cancer tumors can adapt to immune cell infiltration by responding to the increased concentration of interferon gamma (IFN-ɣ) and other cytokines secreted by subsets of T lymphocytes with the upregulation of the immune checkpoint proteins such as Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1). These checkpoint proteins allow the tumors to evade immune targeting and reduce the immune response, thus promoting tumor progression.
In this application note, you will learn:
- How exogenous addition of IFN-ɣ effects the expression of PD-L1 and secretion of several cytokines in cultures of HCC38 cells (a triple-negative breast cancer cell line)
- How co-culturing activated immune cells and breast cancer cells stimulates differential expression of some immune checkpoint and inflammatory biomarkers compared to culturing cells alone with PBMC-conditioned media
- How to rapidly measure multiple biomarkers in cell culture supernatant and lysates from the same wells of a culture dish to examine protein expression profiles from cancer and immune cell culture models using AlphaLISA® assays together with ATPlite™ 1step and the EnVision® multimode plate reader.