MicroRNA-140 suppresses osteosarcoma tumor growth by enhancing anti-tumor immune response and blocking mTOR signaling

Immune checkpoint blockade is proved to be a promising therapeutic strategy against several human malignancies. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are 22 nucleotide RNAs that play important roles in regulating gene expression, either suppressing its translation or speeding up its degradation. In this study, we demonstrated that miR-140 acts as a critical modulator of PD-L1 and is significantly reduced in osteosarcoma (OS). MiR-140 was inversely correlated with PD-L1 and luciferase reporter assay confirmed that miR-140 can direct regulate PD-L1 expression by binding to its 3'UTR. MiR-140 failed to influence tumor growth in nude mice, whereas markedly inhibited tumor growth in the immune-competent C57BL/6J mice. Mechanistically, the tumor-suppressive role of miR-140 was associated with the increased infiltrates of cytotoxic CD8(+) T cells and the decreased infiltrates of myeloid-derived suppressive cells and regulatory T cells. Moreover, miR-140 significantly inhibited mTOR signaling and combined miR-140 overexpression with pharmacological inhibition of mTOR signaling showed remarkable synergistic anti-tumor effect. Collectively, our findings indicate that miR-140 exerts anti-OS efficacy by targeting immune checkpoint molecule PD-L1 and can be developed as a novel immunotherapeutic agent for the treatment of OS. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.