Tamoxifen suppresses brain metastasis of estrogen receptor-deficient breast cancer by skewing microglia polarization and enhancing their immune functions

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-57693/v2

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Research article

Tamoxifen suppresses brain metastasis of estrogen receptor-deficient breast cancer by skewing microglia polarization and enhancing their immune functions

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-57693/v2

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Journal Publication

published 18 Mar, 2021

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Background: Brain metastasis of breast cancer exhibits exceedingly poor prognosis, and both triple negative (TN) and Her2 + subtypes have the highest incidence of brain metastasis. Although estrogen blockers are considered to be ineffective for their treatment, recent evidence indicates that estrogen blockade using tamoxifen showed certain efficacy. However, how estrogen affects brain metastasis of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains elusive.

Methods: To examine the effect of estrogen on brain metastasis progression, nude mice were implanted with brain metastatic cells and treated with either estrogen supplement, tamoxifen or ovariectomy for estrogen depletion. For clinical validation study, brain metastasis specimens from pre- and post-menopause breast cancer patients were examined for microglia polarization by immunohistochemistry. To examine the estrogen-induced M2 microglia polarization, microglia cells were treated with estrogen and the M1/M2 microglia polarization was detected by qRT-PCR and FACS. The estrogen receptor-deficient brain metastatic cells, SkBrM and 231BrM, were treated with conditioned medium (CM) derived from microglia that were treated with estrogen in the presence or absence of tamoxifen. The effect of microglia-derived CM on tumor cells was examined by colony formation assay and sphere forming ability.

Results: We found that M2 microglia were abundantly infiltrated in brain metastasis of pre-menopausal breast cancer patients. A similar observation was made in vivo, when we treated mice systemically with estrogen. Blocking of estrogen signaling either by tamoxifen treatment or surgical resection of mice ovaries suppressed M2 microglial polarization and decreased the secretion of C-C motif chemokine ligand 5, resulting in suppression of brain metastasis. The estrogen modulation also suppressed stemness in TNBC cells in vitro. Importantly, estrogen enhanced the expression of signal regulatory protein α on microglia and restricted their phagocytic ability.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that estrogen promotes brain metastasis by skewing polarity of M2 microglia and inhibiting their phagocytic ability, while tamoxifen suppresses brain metastasis by blocking the M2 polarization of microglia and increasing their anti-tumor phagocytic ability. Our results also highlight a potential therapeutic utility of tamoxifen for treating brain metastasis of hormone receptor deficient breast cancer.

Cancer Biology

Estrogen receptor-deficient breast cancer

brain metastasis

microglia polarization

Tamoxifen

Metastatic brain tumors are the most frequently occurring intracranial neoplasms in adults with the annual incidence of over 200,000 cases in the United States [1]. The majority of brain metastases originate from primary tumors of lungs, melanoma, and breast [2, 3]. Patients with brain metastasis of breast cancer have extremely poor prognosis, high mortality rate and frequent incidence of tumor recurrence. Even with aggressive treatments involving surgical intervention, irradiation, and chemotherapy, only a fraction of these patients with brain metastasis survives longer than 2 years after diagnosis [4]. Therefore, understanding the pathological mechanism of brain metastasis of breast cancer is urgently needed to identify a novel and effective therapeutic strategy.

One of major risk factors for brain metastasis of breast cancer is age. A previous study showed that the cumulative 5-years incidence of brain metastasis is higher in younger patients (20.5%) than in older patients (7.5%) [5]. Importantly, premenopausal women have 1.5–2 times higher incidence of brain metastasis than postmenopausal women [6]. This difference is considered to be attributed to the female sex hormones, especially estrogen. Several studies have shown that the incidence of brain metastasis is associated with the expression of estrogen receptor (ER) in luminal subtype breast cancer [7-10]. Blocking ER by antagonist prolonged the onset of brain metastases from breast cancer [8-10]. Although the function of estrogen in promoting primary cancer is well documented, the physiological role of estrogen on brain metastasis and tumor microenvironment is poorly understood.

Among all subtypes of breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a significantly poorer outcome, and approximately 30 to 46% TNBC patients will eventually develop brain metastasis prior to death [11, 12]. Although tamoxifen is used as the first-line treatment for ER⁺ breast cancer, it is not a standard treatment for ER negative or TNBC patients due to a lack hormone receptor [13-15]. Interestingly, however, recent studies showed that tamoxifen exhibited anti-tumor effect [16, 17] in TNBC, suggesting that tamoxifen may modulate estrogen-related tumor microenvironment that suppresses tumor progression. Tumor metastasis in the brain is a complex process that involves communication between the neoplastic cells and the normal brain cells. The non-neoplastic cells such as endothelial cells, macrophages, lymphocytes, astrocytes and microglial cells present in brain tumor microenvironment play a critical role in the formation of brain metastasis. Among these cells, microglia accounts for 30–50% of the total brain tumor mass [18, 19]. Previous in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated that activated microglia accelerate growth and invasion of brain tumors [18-20]. A lack of microglia/macrophage significantly inhibited metastatic spread of tumors [21-23], suggesting that microglia plays a critical role in the tumor invasion and metastasis in the brain.

Here, we investigated the effect of estrogen and tamoxifen on brain metastasis of hormone receptor deficient breast cancer and examined the role of estrogen-induced polarization of microglia in tumor progression. We found that estrogen strongly skewed microglia to M2 phenotype, which significantly suppressed anti-tumor immune functions. M2 microglia also promoted tumor stem cell growth by secreting C-C motif chemokine ligand 5 (CCL5) in response to estrogen. Blocking of estrogen signaling by tamoxifen and ovariectomy exhibited anti-tumor effect on hormone receptor-negative tumor growth by modulating M2 microglial polarization and suppressing their anti-tumor immune function.

Animal

Animals were treated in accordance with the US National Institutes of Health Animal

Protection Guidelines and approved by the Wake Forest Baptist Health Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. 5-6 weeks old of female Nude mice were used. The mice were housed (five per cage) with a stable temperature (24 ± 1°C), a 12-h light/dark cycle, and unrestricted access to food and water. The housing environment and animal health were monitored by the laboratory animal center. To examine the role of estrogen on brain metastasis, nude mice were anesthetized and randomly divided into five groups: 1) tumor transplant only, 2) tumor transplant plus 17β-estradiol (E2), 3) tumor transplant plus ovariectomy (OVX), 4) tumor transplant plus OVX and E2 supplement, 5) Tamoxifen (Tamo), and 6) OVX+E2+Tamo. For OVX, the mouse was anesthetized by inhalation of isofluorane. After wiping the injection site with three times of Betadine and 70% alcohol, a midline dorsal incision (Approx 1 cm) was made using a sharp scissor. A smaller incision (<1 cm) in the muscle layer on either side of midline incision was then made to allow entry into the peritoneal cavity. The ovaries and uterus were identified in a fat pad. The end of bilateral uterus were ligated by 6-0 polyproplene suture and the ovaries were removed. The sham group received the same incision but the ovaries were not removed. For E2 supplement, a 0.5 cm incision was made under the neck skin and implanted with 1.5mg/pellet E2 (Innovative Research of America, 60 day release) and incision was closed by 6-0 polypropylene suture. Finally, the 6-0 polyproplene suture was used to close the incision site of body wall and skin. One dose of buprenorphine (0.05 mg/kg) was subcutaneously administered and animals were allowed to wake up on the heated pad. The animals were positioned laterally and kept warm for 30 min until they recovered from anesthesia. One week later, mice received luciferase-labeled 231BrM cells by intracardiac injection (i.c.) at a concentration of 2 x 10⁵cells in 100 μL PBS into the left cardiac ventricle. After 3 days of tumor transplantation, mice in tamoxifen group received tamoxifen (20 mg/kg) treatment by i.p. injection every three days for 30 days. The whole body photon flux of mice was measured immediately after injection to confirm a successful injection using IVIS Xenogen bioimager (Caliper). Tumor growth was monitored by bioluminescence until day 30. For bioluminescent imaging, the mice were injected with D-luciferin intraperitoneally (100 mg/kg), followed by capturing images every week using IVIS Xenogen bioimager. The brain metastasis was monitored and the luminescence was quantified once per week. At the endpoint, whole brain was removed, incubated in PBS with 0.6 mg/mL luciferin for 5 minutes and ex vivo photon flux was measured by IVIS.

Human subject

Human breast cancer specimens were obtained from surgical pathology archives of the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center (WFBCCC), and Cooperative Human Tissue Network, and Pathology Shared Resource at WFBCCC. All tissue sections were obtained by surgical resection and the patient’s information about age, cancer type and menstrual period and status were record by Wake Forest Baptist hospital. This study was approved by the Wake Forest School of Medicine Institutional Review Board and written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Cell culture and reagents

Human breast cancer line, MDA-MB231BrM2a (231BrM), was a kind gift from Dr. Massague (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center). SKBrM3 cell line was derived from parental SKBr3 cells through three rounds of in vivo selection [24, 25]. SkBrM and 231BrM cell lines were authenticated by using GenePrint® 10 STR System (Promega, # B9510). Human and mouse microglia lines, HMC3 and SIM-A9, were purchased from American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and were authenticated by ATCC. The SkBrM and 231BrM were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS, streptomycin (100 mg/mL) and penicillin (100 U/mL) and HMC3 and SIM-A9 cells were cultured in DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 5% FBS. All cells were grown at 37 °C under 5% CO2. The HMC3 cells were seeded in a 10-cm dish. After reaching 70% confluence, cells were incubated with DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 2% FBS or in medium containing 1 nM E2 (Sigma) or in 1 nM E2 plus the STAT3 inhibitor, STATTIC (Selleckchem.com) at 0.5 μM concentration or in 1nM E2 plus the estrogen receptor antagonist, Tamoxifen (Sigma), at 1 μM concentration. We also knocked down the expression of ERα and β in the human microglia cell line using shRNA and examined the effect of estrogen on modulating M2 microglia-mediated brain metastasis. After 24 hours, cells were washed twice with PBS and then incubated in the fresh DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 2% FBS for 24 hours. The conditioned medium (CM) harvested from the cell culture were centrifuged at 300 ×g for 10 minutes to remove the cells and stored at -80 °C. All cell lines were ensured to be mycoplasma negative by using universal mycoplama detection kit (ATCC, #30-1012k, Lot: 70008746). The cells were collected and qRT-PCR and western blotting were used to quantify protein and mRNA levels. In another round of cell culturing, E2-treated cells were washed again and cultured for an additional 24 hours in fresh medium. The CM were collected to identify cytokines using the cytokines array (Raybio). To examine the effect of microglia on T cell proliferation, the E2-treated SIM-A9 cells were cultured with fluorescent-labeled (CFSE Cell Proliferation Kit; Thermo Fisher) primary mouse T cell for 24 hours and the cell proliferation was measured by flow cytometry.

Immunohistochemistry

The human brain sections were stained using goat anti-CD206 (1:200, R&D systems) for M2 microglia and anti-CD47 (1:100, Invitrogen) for tumor cells and anti-SIRP (1:500, Cell signaling). Brain sections were then incubated with appropriate HRP-conjugated secondary antibodies using diaminobenzidine as the substrate. The signals were evaluated based on their intensities after subtracting the signals of the primary antibody-omitted negative controls. In some cases, the primary antibodies were replaced by isotype antibodies to control for non-specific binding of the antibodies. To determine the area of CD206⁺cells in brain metastasis, we chose 3 randomly selected fields in each tumor and measured staining intensity by using the Image-Pro software. We also chose and measured staining intensities of 3 non-tumor areas in the consecutive slide, and this background intensity was subtracted to normalize the tumor intensity in the specimens. The average normalized intensity of 3 fields was used as the score of that patient. The scoring range was set from 0 (lowest) to 3 (highest).

Western blot

The cultured microglia cells were homogenized (1:3, in cultured cells) in the RIPA buffer, and then centrifuged at 17,000 g for 30 min at 4°C. The protein concentrations of the supernatants were determined and adjusted to the same concentration. Supernatants (30 g of total protein) were mixed with sample buffer containing 0.5 M of dithiothreitol, heated to 80°C for 10 min, loaded into each well of 4% polyacrylamide gel and resolved at 120 V for 2 h. The separated proteins were transferred to a polyvinylidene fluoride membrane (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, CA, USA), blocked in 5% milk, and probed with respective primary antibodies: JAK (1:1000, Cell signaling), STAT3 (1:1000, Cell signaling), p-STAT3 (1:3000, Cell signaling), GAPDH (1:10000) (Cell Signaling), PD-L1 (1:2000) (Cell Signaling). The bound antibodies were detected using an enhanced chemiluminescence detection kit (PerkinElmer, Boston, MA, USA). The band densities were measured using an imaging system (BioChemi; UVP, Upland, CA, USA) and analyzed using ImageJ (1.43u) (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/). For gel loading control, membranes were stained with monoclonal-GAPDH antibody (1:50000, Cell signaling).

Flow Cytometry

Nude mice were anesthetized with an overdose of isoflurane and their brains were removed and placed in ice-cold PBS containing 2.5 mg/ml of trypsin and dissociated using mechanical shearing. The cell suspension homogenates were passed through a 40-µm nylon membrane (Becton Dickinson Labware, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) and then centrifuged at 500 g for 10 min. The pellets were suspended in PBS, and microglial cells were isolated using a combination of protocols of differential density (stepwise Percoll) gradient centrifugation and immunomagnetic Iba1⁺ cell separation. Purified microglial cells were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde at 4°C for 1 h and then incubated with F4/80 antibody (1:250) (eBioscience), Tmem119 (1:250) (eBioscience), CD206 (1:250) (eBioscience), CD44 (1:10000) (BioLegend) and ESA (1:250) (Invitrogen) at 4°C for 16 h. After they were washed twice with PBS, the stained cells were subjected to flow cytometric analysis (FACScan; Becton-Dickinson, Mountain View, CA, USA). The percentage of cells was calculated using Cell-QuestTM software (Becton-Dickinson).

Phagocytosis assay

231BrM cells were labeled with PKH26 dye (Sigma, USA). The labeled cells were then washed three times and cultured overnight to reduce nonspecific leakage of dye during the assay. Labeled 231BrM cells were mixed with HMC3 human microglia cells that were pre-treated with or without E2 (1 nM) or E2 plus tamoxifen at 1 μM concentration. Co-cultured 231BrM and HMC3 cells in the culture slides were harvested after 8 h and fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde. Microglial cells were counterstained with anti-Iba1 antibody overnight. Secondary antibody conjugated with fluorescent dye Alexa-fluor 488 (1:1000, Invitrogen) was used to detect the microglia. The phagocytic activities were measured by immunofluorescence microscope and flow cytometry. For quantification of phagocytosis, the phagocytic percentage was calculated as: 100 x [percent Iba1⁺/PKH26⁺ cells / (percent Iba1⁺/PKH26^-cells + percent Iba1⁺/PKH26⁺ cells)].

CCL5 and TNF-α ELISA

Microglial cells (HMC3) were treated with or without E2 (1 nM) or E2 plus tamoxifen (1 μM) for 24 hours. Cells were washed with PBS twice and incubated in the fresh DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 2% FBS for additional 24 hours. Conditioned medium was collected and analyzed by the human CCL5 and TNF-α ELISA kit (Sigma, USA). The HMC3 cells were homogenized in RIPA lysis buffer and centrifuged at 13,000g for 30 min at 4 °C. The supernatant were collected, and protein concentrations were measured and adjusted to 1 mg/mL. Briefly, 96-well plates were first coated with anti-CCL5 or TNF-α monoclonal antibodies followed by addition of 100 μL of the microglia conditional medium or the same volume of the CCL5 and TNF-α standards. The plate was incubated at 4 °C overnight on a rocking platform. After washing the plates, the detection antibody and streptavidin solution were added to each well. After incubation, the TMB and stop solution were added to each well. Finally, the plates were examined at an absorbance wavelength of 450 nm. Standard curves were obtained from values generated from known concentrations of mouse and human CCL5 or TNF-α provided by the kit.

Arginase-1 gene promoter reporter assay and natural compound screening

To examine the estrogen-induced M2 microglial polarization and examine the effect of tamoxifen on estrogen-induced microglial polarization, HMC3 cells were first infected with lentivirus containing green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene and GFP⁺ cells were sorted by FACS. The GFP⁺ HMC3 cells were seeded in 96-well plates for one day and were transfected with the Arginase-1 promoter reporter plasmid (Addgene) using Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen; Carlsbad, CA, USA). After 24 hours of incubation, the cells were treated with only E2 or E2 plus tamoxifen in presence of 2% FBS and cultured for another 24 hours. Cells were washed twice and were treated with 100 μL D-luciferin for 5 min. The expression of luciferase was detected by using IVIS Xenogen bioimager. For arginase-1 promoter luciferase normalization, the photon flux was divided by GFP signal which was measured by Multi-Mode Reader (Biocompare). Each experiment was conducted a minimum of three times.

Statistical analysis

The total number (n) of observations in each group is indicated in figure captions. Data are represented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). Significance was set at p < 0.05. All studies with more than two groups were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and then Bonferroni post-hoc tests if the overall effect was significant. Two-way ANOVA was used to analyze the effect of E2, OVX, and tamoxifen on brain metastasis of breast cancer in vivo. Bonferroni post-hoc tests were done if the main effects or interactions were significant. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze the effect of estrogen, OVX, STATTIC or tamoxifen treatment on M1/M2 gene polarization and tumor progression, effect of different concentrations of TNF-α or CCL5 on cancer progression. Significance between groups was represented as *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001.

Estrogen promotes brain metastasis of breast cancer

To test the effect of female hormones on brain metastasis of ER-negative breast cancer and to understand how tamoxifen modulate the metastatic growth in the brain, we first performed bilateral ovariectomy (OVX) in 5-6 week-old female mice. One week after the surgery, mice were intracardially implanted with luciferase-labeled human ER-negative breast cancer cells, 231BrM. The mice were then implanted with or without 17β-estradiol (E2) by subcutaneous implantation of a disc or received tamoxifen treatment (20 mg/kg) by i.p. injection every three days for one month (Fig. 1A). Tamoxifen is known to be blood brain barrier (BBB) permeable [26]. As shown in Figure 1A-1D, E2 significantly increased the incidence and growth of brain metastasis [Brain metastasis: Veh (33%) vs. E2 (89%)]. On the other hand, OVX dramatically suppressed brain metastasis progression [Brain metastasis: E2 (89%) vs. OVX (11%)]. However, the OVX-mediated suppression of brain metastasis was rescued by E2 treatment [Brain metastasis: OVX (11%) vs. E2+OVX (33%)]. Interestingly, tamoxifen alone or OVX-treated with E2 plus tamoxifen significantly repressed brain metastasis growth to the similar level observed in the OVX group (Fig. 1B-1D). Since MDA-MB-231 cells are resistant to tamoxifen [27], we sought of a possibility that the tumor suppressive effect is due to the tumor microenvironment. Previous studies showed that activation of microglia, especially pro-tumor M2 microglia, promoted the progression of glioma [28-31]. Therefore, we examined M1 and M2 microglia in the brain of OVX-, E2-, tamoxifen-, OVX plus tamoxifen- and OVX plus E2 and tamoxifen-treated mice by flow cytometry. The result of FACS analysis revealed that the population of M1 microglial cell (F4/80⁺) was significantly decreased (Fig. 1E and Supplemental Fig. 1A) and high levels of M2 microglial cells (CD206⁺) accumulated in the lesions of E2-treated mice (Fig. 1F and Supplemental Fig. 1B), suggesting that E2 induced microglia polarization to M2 phenotype in the brain metastatic lesions. In contrast, the effect of E2 in microglia polarization was abrogated by OVX, tamoxifen, or OVX with E2 plus tamoxifen (Fig. 1E, 1F and Supplemental Fig. 1A and 1B). These results indicate that E2 promotes brain metastasis by skewing microglia polarization to M2 phenotype. To validate this notion in a clinical setting, we examined the status of M2 microglia activation in brain metastatic lesions of pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer patients (Fig. 1G). We observed that M2 microglia (CD206⁺ cells) abundantly infiltrated in the brain lesions of pre-menopause patients compared to post-menopause patients (Fig. 1G). Microglia and peripheral macrophages are known to be recruited by brain metastasis lesion. Although microglia and macrophage share many common surface markers and similar physiological functions, recent studies have demonstrated that microglia and macrophages are two distinct myeloid populations with different developmental origins [32, 33], and they can be distinguished by CD45 macrophage marker [34-36]. We found that the macrophages were recruited in the brain metastasis lesion of breast cancer patients (Fig. 1G). However, the population of CD45⁺ macrophage was significantly less than that of CD206⁺ M2 microglia. Importantly, there was no difference in CD45⁺ cells in the brain metastasis lesions of pre-menopause patients compared to post-menopause patient (Fig. 1G). We also examined the infiltrated microglia and macrophage in the mouse brain using the macrophage marker CD45 and the microglia marker Tmem119. We found that the microglia (CD45⁻/Tmem119⁺) are more abundantly infiltrated than macrophages (CD45⁺/Tmem^-) in the brain metastatic lesions (Supplemental Fig. 1C)

Estrogen skewed M2 microglial polarization

Because M2 microglia are abundantly infiltrated in brain metastatic lesions of pre-menopause patients, we examined whether estrogen promotes brain metastasis by polarizing microglia to M2 microglia. We found that the expression of estrogen receptor (ER) on microglia was up-regulated in the mice brain after E2 supplement (Supplemental Fig. 2A). We examined the expression of ERs in HMC3 (Human) and SIM-A9 (Mouse) microglia cells and found that the expressions of estrogen receptor α and β are up-regulated by E2 treatment (Supplemental Fig. 2B). To further investigate the effect of estrogen on microglia polarization, HMC3 and SIM-A9 cells were treated with E2 followed by examining the expression of M1 and M2 markers. Our results showed that E2 significantly increased the mRNA expression of M2-related genes, arginase-1 (Arg1), arginase-2 (Arg2), and CD206, in both human and mouse microglial cells lines (Fig. 2A and 2B). On the other hand, blocking estrogen receptor (ER) signaling by tamoxifen or knockdown of ERα or ERβ by shRNA significantly suppressed E2-induced M2 microglia polarization (Fig. 2C, 2D, and Supplemental Fig. 2C and 2D). Phenol red in tissue culture media is a weak estrogen [37], we also examined the microglia’s polarization by incubating human microglia cells with or without Phenol red and with or without 2% of FBS or charcoal-stripped FBS for 1 and 3 day. The cell viability (Supplemental Fig. 3A) and M1/M2 phenotype (Supplemental Fig. 3B, 3C) had no significant difference between the groups. This result is consistent with other published study [38]. As the JAK-STAT3 pathway is known to induce M2 microglia polarization [39], we examined the status of phospho-STAT3 and JAK expression in microglia after E2 treatment. Indeed, E2 treatment strongly enhanced the activation of JAK/STAT3 in microglia, while tamoxifen suppressed E2-induced activation of JAK and STAT3 (Fig. 2E). We then treated microglia with E2 in the presence or absence of the STAT3 inhibitor (STATTIC) or tamoxifen and examined their effects on polarization of M1/M2 microglia using the Arg1 promoter reporter [40]. We found that E2 upregulated the Arg1 gene promoter activity, and this effect was significantly suppressed by STATTIC and/or tamoxifen treatment (Fig. 2F). Moreover, inhibition of STAT3 and estrogen receptor reversed the E2-mediated suppression of M1 (F4/80⁺/Iba1⁺) and promotion of M2 (CD206⁺/Iba1⁺) polarization (Fig. 2G and 2H). These results suggest that the E2 promotes M2 polarization of microglia via activation of the STAT3 pathway.

Condition medium (CM) of estrogen-treated microglia promotes tumor cell growth and stem cell self-renewal

To examine how E2 promotes brain metastasis by upregulating M2 microglia polarization, we treated breast cancer brain metastatic cells, SKBrM (ER^-/Her2⁺) and 231BrM (ER^-/PR^-/Her2^-), with conditioned medium (CM) that was generated from human HMC3 microglia treated with or without E2. To avoid direct effect of E2 on tumor growth, microglia were treated with E2 (1 nM) for 24 hours, washed with PBS to remove E2, and incubated in the fresh DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 2% FBS for 24 hours. The CM was then collected and added to SKBrM and 231BrM cells. We found that the CM derived from E2-treated microglia significantly increased cell viability (Fig. 3A) and colony forming ability (Fig. 3B) of both SKBrM and 231BrM cells. The expression of stemness-inducing genes, SOX2, OCT4 and NANOG, were also significantly upregulated when the brain metastatic cells were treated with the CM derived from E2-treated microglia (Fig. 3C and 3D). Furthermore, treatment of SKBrM and 231BrM cells with CM generated from E2-treated microglia showed significant increase in their sphere forming ability (Fig. 3E) and CD44⁺/ESA⁺ cancer stem cell (CSC) population (Fig. 3F). In contrast, direct treatment of cancer cells with the same dose of E2 (1 nM) did not affect the stem cell renewal or expression of stemness genes (Supplemental Fig. 4A-D). Furthermore, E2-mediated promotion of the CSC population (CD44⁺/ESA⁺) was also significantly suppressed by STATTIC treatment (Fig. 3G). These results suggest that E2 induces secretory factor(s) from microglia, which in turn promotes tumor cell growth and self-renewal. We also examined the direct cytotoxic effect of tamoxifen on tumor cell viability in vitro (Fig. 3H). Our results showed that tamoxifen suppressed cell viability at the concentration of 100 μΜ, but not at 1 μΜ (the dose used throughout our microglia experiments) (Fig. 3H), indicating that the anti-tumor effect of tamoxifen is not mediated by direct cytotoxic effect on tumor cells, and it is rather mediated by the effect on microglia. To further investigate the effect of estrogen on microglia-derived tumor progression, 231BrM cells were treated with CM from microglia that were pre-treated with E2 or E2 plus tamoxifen or E2 plus shERα/β. We found that CM from E2 plus tamoxifen or shERα/β treated microglia significantly suppressed the tumor promoting effect of E2 treated microglia CM (Fig. 3I, 3J, Supplemental Fig. 4E and 4F). Similarly, we found that CM derived from microglia that were treated with E2 plus tamoxifen or shERα/β significantly suppressed the population of CSC (Supplemental Fig. 4G) and the expression of stemness-related genes SOX2 and NANOG (Fig. 3K-M, Supplemental Fig. 4H and Supplemental Fig. 4I).

Estrogen induces secretion of CCL5 from microglia and promotes tumor growth and stemness

To identify the factor(s) induced by E2 in microglia, we performed cytokine array analysis (consisting of 99 cytokines and growth factors) and found that E2 treatment significantly increased the secretion of C-C motif chemokine ligand 5 (CCL5) whereas it decreased tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) secretion in the microglial CM (Fig. 4A). The effect of E2 in increasing CCL5 and decreasing TNF-α secretion was further verified in human microglia by performing ELISA (Fig 4B and 4C). In contrast, blocking estrogen receptor by tamoxifen or shERα/β significantly suppressed E2-mediated secretion of CCL5 and up-regulated the production of TNF-α (Fig. 4B, 4C and Supplemental Fig. 5A-5D). TNFα and CCL5 are known to be associated with M1 and M2 phenotypes, respectively [41-43]. To examine the functional effects of TNF-α and CCL5, we treated breast cancer cells with recombinant TNF-α or CCL5 and examined their effect on these cells. We found that TNF-α treatment significantly decreased cell viability while CCL5 significantly increased viability of both SKBrM and 231BrM cells (Fig. 4D and 4E). It should be noted that TNF-α has been shown to kill some tumor cells through activation of apoptotic signaling [44, 45]. We also found that the mRNA expression of CSC markers, SOX2, OCT4 and NANOG, was increased in 231BrM cells when they were treated with recombinant CCL5 (Fig. 4F). Similarly, CCL5 augmented the population of ESA⁺/CD44⁺ CSC (Fig. 4G). To examine whether the upregulation of stemness genes by the CM is indeed mediated by CCL5, CM of E2-treated microglia was treated with CCL5 neutralizing antibody followed by measuring the expression of CSC genes. Our result indicates that depletion of CCL5 in the CM significantly suppressed the expression of stemness genes SOX2, OCT4 and NANOG (Fig. 4H). Moreover, the stimulatory effect of CM on stem cell population (CD44⁺/ESA⁺ CSC) was also suppressed after the CCL5 depletion (Fig. 4I). In addition, the E2-mediated increase in the population of CSC (CD44⁺/ESA⁺) was significantly suppressed by tamoxifen treatment (Fig. 4I). Because cancer cells may also directly affect polarization of microglia [46, 47], we examined the effect of tumor cell-derived conditioned medium. Our results indicated that the direct treatment of microglia with E2 promoted M2 microglia polarization significantly more than the treatment with tumor conditioned medium (Supplemental Fig. 5E and 5F). These results further support our notion that E2 stimulates the secretion of CCL5 from microglia, which in turn promotes self-renewal of tumor cells.

Estrogen suppressed anti-tumor immune function of microglia

It is known that tumor cells express programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) that binds PD-1 on T cell, resulting in dysfunction of cytotoxic T-cell activity [48]. Several other studies have also shown that microglia expresses PD-L1, which interacts with T cell PD-1 to suppress adaptive immune function and tumor infiltration of T cells [48-50]. We therefore examined whether E2 affects PD-L1 expression in microglia. As shown in Fig. 5A, both mRNA and protein expression of PD-L1 in microglia were significantly up-regulated by E2, and inhibiting STAT3 activation by STATTIC or blocking estrogen receptor by tamoxifen treatment significantly suppressed E2-induced up-regulation of PD-L1 (Fig. 5A). Moreover, the expression of PD-L1 was elevated on the membrane of microglia after E2 treatment (Fig. 5B). To investigate how upregulation of PD-L1 on microglia by E2 affects T cell function, T cells were incubated with microglia cells that were pre-treated with E2. We found that the proliferation of T cells was significantly suppressed when T cell were incubated with E2-treated microglia (Fig. 5C). Blocking STAT3 activation in microglia by STATTIC treatment restored E2-mediated suppression of T cell proliferation (Fig. 5C).

Microglia cells are known to exhibit anti-tumor functions by phagocytosis and by releasing cytotoxic factors [51]. However, tumor cells express CD47 that interacts with signal regulatory protein α (SIRPα) on microglia [52] and triggers the ‘do not eat me’ signal which enables cancer cells to evade microglia’s phagocytic ability. To examine if E2 functionally affects the “do not eat me” signal, we measured the expression of SIRPα on microglia and CD47 on tumor cells. We found that SIRPα was significantly upregulated in human and mouse microglia upon E2 treatment (Fig. 5D). Tamoxifen dramatically decreased E2-mediated up-regulation of SIRPα (Fig. 5D). We also found that E2 significantly increased the expression of CD47 in both SKBrM and 231BrM cells (Fig. 5E). Although the SKBrM and 231BrM cells are considered to be “ER-negative cells”, several studies also have found that 30% of TNBCs express ERα and β by an antibody validation analysis [53-56]. Therefore, we suspected that upregulation of CD47 by E2 was still through the activation of the ER signaling. To test this possibility, we infected 231BrM with lentivirus including shRNA to ERα and β and examined CD47 expression in the presence and absence of E2. We found that the effect of E2 on CD47 expression was indeed nullified by the shRNAs. (Supplemental Fig. 6A). The next question is how ER upregulates CD47. E2 is known to up-regulate the PI3K/AKT signaling [57, 58], and previous study have shown that CD47 expression is controlled by PI3K/Akt phosphorylation [59, 60]. Therefore, to examine whether E2 up-regulates the expression of CD47 by activating PI3K, 231BrM cells were treated with PI3K inhibitor, LY294002. We found that blocking PI3K activation in tumor cells impaired the E2-induced up-regulation of CD47 (Supplemental Fig. 6B), suggesting that activation of CD47 by E2 is likely to be mediated through the interaction with ER followed by activation of the PI3K signaling. Importantly, the expression of CD47 was shown to be strongly up-regulated in brain metastatic lesions of pre-menopause patients (Fig. 5F). We then examined the effect of E2 on phagocytic ability of microglia. 231BrM cells were pre-labeled with the red-fluorescent dye, PKH26 [61], and co-cultured with microglia that were treated with or without E2 or E2 plus tamoxifen. After 24 hour of incubation, small pieces of PKH26⁺ cells were accumulated inside of microglia in control group, suggesting that tumor cells were rapidly degraded by microglia through phagocytosis (Fig. 5G). However, the microglia suppressed phagocytic activities toward tumor cells after E2 pre-treatment (Fig. 5G and 5H). In contrast, tamoxifen reversed E2-mediated suppression of phagocytic activities (Fig. 5G and 5H). These results suggest that E2 suppresses microglia’s immune function by blocking the phagocytic ability and up-regulating PD-L1, which in turn promotes brain metastasis progression.

The tumor promoting effect of estrogen is well established; however, how estrogen affects tumor microenvironment and support brain metastasis is still poorly understood. Our results indicate the critical roles of estrogen on tumor microenvironment in promoting brain metastasis by skewing microglia to M2 phenotype and inhibiting microglial phagocytic ability. This phenotypic conversion of microglia by estrogen is mediated through activation of STAT3, and that blocking STAT3 activation suppressed the M2 conversion, down-regulated the secretion of pro-tumor M2 cytokines and suppressed their phagocytic activity towards tumor cells. We also found that the population of M2 microglial cells were decreased in OVX and tamoxifen treated mice, while the estrogen-induced brain metastasis were suppressed in both OVX and tamoxifen treated mice (Fig. 6). These results suggest that overall homeostasis of sex hormones play a key role in microglial polarization, which affects the progression of brain metastasis in TNBC women.

Skewing polarization of microglia by estrogen was reported by multiple previous studies [62-65], and several possible mechanisms were suggested. Saijo et. al. showed that estrogen could activate CCAAT/enhancer-binding proteins and inhibit the production of M1 pro-inflammatory cytokines in microglial cells [66]. It was also reported that estrogen suppressed the expression of M1 pro-inflammatory genes by blocking the nuclear translocation of NF-кB that suppressed DNA binding activity of NF-кB and upregulated IκB, an inhibitor of NF-κB signaling [67, 68]. In addition, Vejito et al found that estrogen binding to estrogen receptor downregulated toll-like receptor 4 expression and inhibited M1 pro-inflammatory cytokines production [69]. These results suggest that estrogen modulates microglial polarization through multiple pathways. In the current study, we found a mechanism by which estrogen promotes M2 microglia by upregulating STAT3 expression. It should be noted that STAT3 activation has been associated with promotion of immunosuppressive microenvironment [70]. The activated STAT3 was known to reduce the expression of the genes that are necessary for antigen presentation such as MHC-II, CD80, and CD86 in microglia [71, 72]. Activation of STAT3 also promotes cell proliferation of microglia by enhancing cell survival genes [73]. Treating primary culture of microglia with the STAT3 inhibiter blocked their proliferation [74, 75]. We also observed that the number of M2 microglia was increased in the brain of premenopausal breast cancer patients as well as in the mouse supplemented with E2. On the other hand, the estrogen-associated proliferation of M2 microglia was blocked by the OVX and Tamoxifen treatment in mice, suggesting that estrogen deficiency suppresses microglia proliferation, which may well explain why the number of microglia is lower in brain metastasis of older breast cancer patients and in female mice with an OVX or tamoxifen treatment.

We have shown that estrogen decreased the secretion of M1-associated TNF-α and increased the M2-associated CCL5 in the conditioned medium of microglial cells. TNF-α is known to inhibit cell survival and proliferation by activating apoptosis signaling [44, 45]. The CCL5 and its receptor CCR5 have been detected in hematological malignancies and lymphomas. The interaction of CCL5 and CCR5 has been shown to promote tumor development by multiple mechanisms including acting as growth factors [76], enhancing migration and invasiveness [77], stimulating angiogenesis [78], and recruitment of macrophage [79]. Furthermore, knockdown or knockout of CCL5 in tumor cells was shown to suppress metastatic capability in vivo and in vitro of 4T1 breast cancer model [76, 80]. In our study, we found that stem cell genes, NANOG/OCT4/SOX2, were significantly up-regulated in CCL5-treated breast cancer cells, suggesting that E2-induced CCL5 promotes brain metastasis by enhancing the stemness of breast cancer brain metastatic cells. The depletion of CCL5 from CM of E2-treated microglia significantly suppressed E2-induced stemness genes and decreased the population of stem cells. Consistent with these results, CM from microglia treated with tamoxifen repressed the population of cancer stem cells by downregulating CCL5. These results also suggest that CCL5 in serum may serve as a novel therapeutic target as well as a biomarker for brain metastasis of breast cancer.

The current study focused on the effect of estrogen on tumor microenvironment; however, there are abundant reports showing direct effect of estrogen on tumor cells. Our study here showed that estrogen promotes brain metastasis by suppressing the phagocytosis function of microglia through activation of the “don’t eat me” signal. Our results showed that the estrogen promoted the expression of CD47 on tumor cells and SIRPα on microglia. Interestingly, we found that brain metastasis lesion of pre-menopause breast cancer patient had higher expression of CD47 in tumor and SIRPα in microglia than post-menopausal patients. These results suggest that estrogen-induced up-regulation of tumor CD47 and SIRPα compromises phagocytic function of microglia, resulting in further tumor growth. In this context, it is noteworthy that high CD47 expression in breast cancer tissues showed significant association with reduced 5-year disease-free survival [81]. Therefore, CD47 may serve as a biomarker to predict breast cancer progression. We found that tamoxifen suppressed estrogen-induced up-regulation of SIRPα expression, resulting in enhanced phagocytic ability. In addition to this suppressive function of estrogen on innate immune function, we found that the expression of PD-L1 was increased in the estrogen-treated microglia. In contrast, a combination of estrogen and tamoxifen suppressed E2-induced elevation of PD-L1 expression. The proliferation of T cells decreased when T cells were co-cultured with microglia cells that were pretreated with E2. Since PD-L1 on microglia interacts with PD-1 on T cells, it also decreases T cell proliferation and their cytotoxic functions as we have shown. These results suggest that estrogen promotes brain metastasis by modulating both innate and adaptive immune functions in the brain.

Estrogens such as 17β-estradiol is known to affect various types of brain microenvironment cells, not only microglia but also neuron, astrocyte, and endothelial cells. Estrogen influences brain function by directly affecting neuronal membranes. E2 was showed to up-regulate the expression of glutamate transporter on neuron and increased the production of neurotransmitter glutamate that promoted brain tumor progression [82, 83]. A previous study in preclinical models showed that pre-menopausal levels of E2 promoted TNBC brain metastasis through activation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and its receptor TrkB in reactive astrocytes [84, 85]. Estrogen also plays a role in increasing BBB permeability. E2 promotes ethanol-induced BBB disruption and changes/or increases in iNOS activity and decreases the tight junction protein expression, occludin and claudin-1, resulting in increased BBB permeability [86, 87]. These results suggest that E2 alters microglia and other brain microenvironment components, which together promotes brain metastasis progression.

Patients with TNBC generally show poor outcomes including early CNS metastasis and a short survival [11, 88]. Hormonal therapy is a standard of care for ER⁺ tumors, however, it has been considered to be not useful for hormone receptor negative patients. Consequently, TNBC has limited treatment approaches. We found that tamoxifen did not directly affect tumor progression on ER-negative breast cancer or TNBC, however, tamoxifen exhibited strong anti-tumor ability in vivo by skewing microglial polarization to M1 and enhancing their phagocytic functions. This result strongly suggests that the effect of tamoxifen on hormone receptor deficient brain metastasis is mediated via modulation of brain microenvironment such as reprograming the function of microglia. Previous study demonstrated that treatment of recurrent malignant gliomas with chronic oral high-dose tamoxifen prolonged the patient survival [89], suggesting that tamoxifen can readily cross the BBB [26, 90] and affect brain tumor microenvironment. Moreover, Yang et. al. showed that tamoxifen increased the overall survival and disease-free survival rate in ER^-/PR⁺breast cancer patients [91]. In addition, treatment with combination of tamoxifen and radiation increased the overall survival rate and reduced the mortality rate of patients with brain metastasis of triple negative tumors [92]. It is noteworthy that Phase I/II clinical trial for testing efficacy of Tamoxifen and anastrozole on TNBC is currently ongoing (NCT01194908 and NCT01234532). Tamoxifen has been shown to up-regulate autophagy and inhibits AMPK/mTOR pathway, resulting in tumor suppression in TNBC [93]. Previous studies also showed that tamoxifen suppressed ER-negative breast cancer cell invasion and metastasis by modulating miR-200c and transcription factor Twist1 [16, 17], suggesting that tamoxifen can suppress progression of ER negative breast cancer by ER-independent pathways.

Our results showed that estrogen promotes TNBC-brain metastasis by skewing microglia polarization and diminishing their innate and adaptive immune functions. We also found that the M2 microglia and tumor progression were suppressed by OVX and tamoxifen treatment. Considering the inhibitory effect of tamoxifen on estrogen-related M2 microglial activation and their minimum toxicity, tamoxifen may serve as a potential treatment option for the brain metastasis, particularly for patients with ER-negative subtype.

TNBC: Triple negative breast cancer

ER: Estrogen receptor

CCL5: C-C motif chemokine ligand 5

OVX: Ovariectomy

CM: Conditioned medium

GFP: Green fluorescent protein

E2: 17β-estradiol

BBB: Blood brain barrier

Arg1: Arginase-1

Arg2: Arginase-2

PD-L1: Programmed death-ligand 1

SIRPα: signal regulatory protein α

FACS: Flow cytometry

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Joan Massagué for providing the brain metastasis cell lines.

Funding

This work was supported by NIH grant RO1CA173499, R01CA185650 and R01CA205067 (to KW). We also used Cancer Center Shared Resources, The Tumor Tissue and Pathology, Cell Engineering, Flow Cytometry, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics that are supported by the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University NCI, National Institutes of Health Grant (P30CA012197). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Cancer Institute. SW is a trainee of the T32 training grant (T32CA247819).

Author information

Affiliations

Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA

Shih-Ying Wu, Sambad Sharma, Kerui Wu, Abhishek Tyagi, Dan Zhao, Ravindra Pramod Deshpande & Kounosuke Watabe

Authors’ Contributions

SW and KW designed the study and wrote the manuscript. SW, SS and KWu conducted experiments and acquired, analyzed and interpreted the data. SS, AT and KWu performed animal experiment. SW and KWu performed intracardiac injections. DZ and RPD performed clinical sample analysis, SW, SS, KWu, AT, DZ, RPD, and KW reviewed and edited manuscript and interpreted the data. KW supervised the study.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kounosuke Watabe.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the institutional review board of the Wake forest University.

Consent for publication: Not applicable.

Competing financial interests: No other authors have any particular competing interests

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Tamoxifen suppresses brain metastasis of estrogen receptor-deficient breast cancer by skewing microglia polarization and enhancing their immune functions

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