Background
DLBCL is the most common B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), accounting for about 30–35 % of adults NHL cases [
1]. Nearly up to one-third patients suffered from relapsed and refractory disease after R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisolone) treatment [
2], and limited patients got benefits from the salvage strategy of autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), indicating new agents are required to be tested in this group of people.
However, the heterogeneity made DLBCL a complex disease to handle with. DLBCL is considered to be characterize into three major subtypes with distinct activating molecular pathways and different clinical outcomes based on the gene expression profiling results [
3]. Patients with activated B cell-like (ABC) subtype, characterised as constitutive NF-κB activation, were considered to have lower progression free survival (PFS) rate and overall survival (OS) rate compared with those with germinal center B-cell (GCB) subtype or primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBL) [
4]. Regarding of the participation of NF-κB in many cell processes like tumor proliferation, invasion and inflammation, targeting NF-κB pathway has become one of the promising therapeutic approach in ABC-DLBCL treatment [
5]. Directly interrupting NF-κB pathway is one option of therapeutic strategy, and lenalidomide, which is used as the immunomodulatory agent treating multiple myeloma (MM), was proved to have anti-tumor effects through downregulating IRF-4 in ABC-DLBCL cell lines [
6]. The selective anti-tumor effect of lenalidomide in DLBCL is also supported by clinical studies. Increasing evidence revealed that ABC-DLBCL patients got better response with higher remission rate and PFS rate when treated with lenalidomide alone or combination with R-CHOP regime [
7,
8]. Meanwhile, lenalidomide was found to have inhibiting function of tumor growth through PI3K/Akt pathway, cereblon/p21, cyclin D1/p27 and Bcl-2 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) in pre-clinical experiments [
9‐
13]. Besides, it also showed effeciency when combined with rituximab, dexamethasone and bortezomib in clinical trials of treating several types of B-cell NHL [
14,
15], which implied the potential combination with other agents in lymphoid hematological maliganancies.
Indirectly, interrupting the upstream of NF-κB could also induce the inhibition of NF-κB pathway. It is known that the constitutive NF-κB activation in ABC-DLBCL is caused by individual or overlapping known mutations like
MYD88 L265P, CARD11, TNFAIP3 and CD79B/A [
16], which are involved in antigen-specific B-cell receptor (BCR) and Toll-like receptor (TLR) induced NF-κB activation. In the signaling cascade triggered by BCR, several tyrosine kinases including PI3K, Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) and mTOR are participated in, subsequently inducing the downstream pathways associated with survival. NVP-Bez235 is one of the dual PI3K/mTOR inhibitors that can suppress the activity of PI3K, mTOR1 and mTOR2. It has shown anti-tumor activity in a range of hematological malignancies including MM, MCL, follicular lymphoma (FL), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) in the pre-clinical studies [
17‐
21]. It was also reported to synergize with agents such as MEK1/2 inhibitor [
22]. Inhibition of mTOR could consequently decrease the phosphorylation of P70S6 kinase as well as eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E binding protein 1 (4EBP1), while PI3K activity represented an inexplicit relationship with mTOR in the complex cell signaling circuits.
Collectively, the findings make us to explore the efficacy of combined lenalidomide with NVP-Bez235 in treating ABC-DLBCL in vitro and in vivo. The aim of the present study was to determine whether lenalidomide could enhance the cytotoxic potency of NVP-Bez235 in ABC subtype of DLBCL, and to further elucidate the underlying mechanisms involved in this effect.
Methods
Cells and cell culture
The non-GCB DLBCL derived cell lines OCI-Ly10, OCI-Ly3 and Su-DHL2 were obtained from Dr. T Zhao (Nanfang Hospital affiliated to Southern Medical University, China). Cell lines were cultured in IMDM (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, USA) with 10 % FBS (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, USA), incubating in 37 °C with 5 % CO2.
Apoptosis assays
Cell apoptosis was determined by flow cytometry according to the protocol of FITC Annexin V Apoptosis Detection Kit I (BD Bioscience, SanJose, CA, USA). Cells were collected and washed by cold phosphoate-buffered saline (PBS), then resuspended in Annexi-binding buffer and sustained with propidium iodide (PI) and FITC Annexin V. After incubating in the dark at room temperature for 15 min, cell suspensions were diluted by Annexin-binding buffer and analysed by BD LSRFotessa flow cytometry (SanJose, CA, USA) immediately. Data were acquired by BD FACSDiva software (SanJose, CA, USA).
Cell proliferation assays
Analysis of cell proliferation was performed with cell counting kit-8 (Dojindo, Japan) assay. NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide were purchased from Selleck (Huston, USA) and dissolved in DMSO. The treatment of BEZ235 was performed as 5nM, 10nM, 20nM and 40nM, while the working concentration of lenalidomide were 0.5 μM, 1 μM, 2 μM and 4 μM. Cells were seeded in 96-well plate at a concentration of 1 × 105/mL. After 72 h, 10uL cell counting kit-8 were added to each well and incubated for 2 h. The absorbance at 450 nm was measured by a microplate reader. Growth inhibition was calculated by the formula (O.D absorbance of treatment group – O.D absorbance of blank)/(O.D absorbance of control group – O.D absorbance of blank) × 100 %. The synergetic effect of two drugs was measured by combination index (CI) using CalcuSyn software (Version 2.1). CI < 1 indicates the synergetic effect, CI = 1 means the additive effect and CI > 1 is regarded as antagonism.
Immunobloting
NF-κB Pathway Sampler Kit, Akt, p-Akt (Ser 308), p-Akt (Thr 473), p21, p-CDK2, CDK2, cyclinA, cyclinD1, mTOR Pathway Sampler Kit, and Apoptosis sampler Kit were obtained from Cell Signaling Technology (Beverly, MA, USA). All the cell lines were treated with NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide in single way or combination for 72 h. Bortezomib was purchased from Selleck (Huston, USA). Cells were performed with 5 nM Bortezomibe for 24 and 48 h, respectively. Then the samples in each group were collected and separated by standard SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis and transferred to NC membrane. Blocked with 5 % non-fat milk supplemented in 0.1 % TBST, membrane was probed with primary antibodies at 4 °C overnight. After washed with TBST, membrane was incubated with HRP-conjugated secondary antibodies (Santa Cruz, CA) for one hour. The bands were detected and quantified in Image Lab software (Bio-Rad Laboratories, California, USA).
Gene silencing with siRNA
NF-κB siRNA were purchased from Santa Cruz (CA, USA). Non-silencing siRNA was designed and synthesized as following: sense 5′-UUCUCCGAACGUGUCACGUTT-3′, antisense 5′-ACGUGACACGUUCGGAGAATT-3′. Cell lines were transiently transfected NF-κB siRNA and non-silencing siRNA by using LipofectAMINE2000 reagent (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). After incubated for 8 h, lipid containing siRNA was removed and warmed complete medium was added. Cells were cotreated with NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide for another 48 h following 24-h-transfection. Cells were collected for immunoblotting. Cell viability was measured when cells were transfected for 24 h followed with 48 h.
Cell cycle assay
Each cell line was seeded in a 12-well plate exposing in drugs for 72 h. Then the cells were collected, centrifuged, washed with ice-cold PBS and resuspended with 70 % alcohol. After fixed in -20 °C for 12 h, the cells were washed and stained with PI and ribonuclease A (Beytime Instituted of Biotechnology, China) at room temperature for 30 min. Cell cycle data were assessed by BD LSRFortes flow cytometry (SanJose, CA, USA) and analyzed by Modfit LT 4.1 (Verity Software House, Topsham, USA).
Mouse model
Six-weeks old nude female mice, purchased from Shanghai Laboratory Animal Center (Shanghai, China), were injected subcutaneously in the right flank with 1 × 107 OCI-Ly10 cells in 100 μL saline. When the tumor volume reached to about 150–300 mm3, mice were randomly divided into 4 groups with 5 mice per group as follows: (I) control: intraperitoneally injected with saline; (II) NVP-Bez235: Bez235 20 mg/kg by oral gavage,dissoved in 10 % NMP (1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone)/PEG 300 90 %, every other day; (III) lenalidomide: intraperitoneally injected lenalidomide 10 mg/kg/day (diluted in 4 % DMSO, 96 % saline); (IV) combination: treatment of NVP-Bez235 with lenalidomide. The tumor volumes were measured every other day by vernier caliper for 28 days and calculated as V = a × b2/2(a, the length of tumor; b, the width of tumor). At the end of observation, mice were killed to remove the tumors. Then the samples were fixed in 4 % formalin and further performed to frozen section. Animal protocol was approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Ruijin Hospital affiliated to School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Immunohistochemistry
Fixed slides obtained from samples of nude mice were incubated in 3 % H2O2 for 10 min to suppress endogenous peroxidase activity and then washed in PBS. Next, the slides were blocked with 1.5 % serum in PBS at room temperature for 30 min and subsequently in BSA for 20 min. Then the slides were incubated with primary antibodies p-NF-κB and Ki-67 (Santa Cruz, CA, USA) overnight. After washed for 15 min, the slides were added with secondary antibodies connected with biotin for half an hour and incubated with SABC (Boster, Wuhan, China). After incubating with a solution of DAB (Boster, Wuhan, China), the tissue slides must be checked under microscope to get appropriate staining. The final steps were counterstaining, dehydrating, clearing and mounting. The positive cells were counted using Image-Pro plus 6.0 (Media Cybernetics, USA).
Terminal deoxytransferase-catalyzed DNA nick-end labeling (Tunel) assay
Frozen sections were performed with a terminal transferase recombinant kit (Roche, Indianapolis, IN, USA) under the guidelines of production information. Cells with green fluorescence were termed as the apoptosis section. Image-Pro plus 6.0 (Media Cybernetics, USA) were used to analyze the positive cells in each slide.
Statistical analysis
All data in this study were analyzed with SPSS 17.0 software (Chicago, USA) and presented as mean ± standard deviation. Independent t test were used to determine the significance of difference between groups. IC50 value was analyzed by probit assay in SPSS. P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significance Overall survival was measured by Kaplan-Meier method. The drug interactions were stated according to Chou-Talalay method and isobologram analysis.
Discussion
Combination strategy has represented lower toxicities and overcoming agent resistance in treatment of DLBCL. The oncogenetic molecular mechanisms involved in ABC-DLBCL were primarily initiated by BCR subunit activated mutations, as well as the
CARD11 and
MYD88 mutations, resulting in the constitutive activation of NF-κB [
16,
24]. Meanwhile, constitutive PI3K signaling activation, resulted from the chronic BCR activation, was proved to support the viability of ABC-DLBCL [
25]. For this reason, targeting proteins involved in these pathways is a rationale way in treating ABC-DLBCL. NVP-Bez235, a dual mTOR/PI3K inhibitor, was found to synergistically interact with BTK inhibitor Ibrutinib [
26] and HDAC inhibitors [
27]. In our study, we demonstrated that combination of low dose of NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide played synergistic roles in killing ABC-DLBCL cells.
ABC-DLBCL cell lines showed different sensitivity to NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide. Su-DHL2 and OCI-Ly3 were more vulnerable to single agent, but OCI-Ly10 showed a little resistant. Investigations of the direct cytotoxicity of lenalidmide in DLBCL [
6,
28] have supported our findings. This difference also resulted in the variety in antiproliferation of combination treatment with different doses. The antagonistic effect appeared when drug doses escalated to higher level in all cell lines. Importantly, the synergistic effect was maintained when the concentrations of both drugs were well below clinical C
max [
23,
29]. It was reported that NVP-Bez235 has no toxicity in normal CD34+ hematopoietic cells [
27], and lenalidomide has limited long-term toxicity [
30], suggesting the potential clinical application value of this combination strategy. We then examined the apoptosis induced by drug combination, and the results are in accordance with our previous findings. The apoptosis proportion of OCI-Ly10 was not as much as those of Su-DHL2 and OCI-Ly3. The difference of toxicity may be explained, at least partly, with the heterogeneity of DLBCL. OCI-Ly3 and OCI-Ly10 both maintain the
MYD88-L256P mutation while Su-DHL2 gets the mutation of
MYD88-S222R [
16]. Meanwhile, mutation of
CARD11, which induces the activation of IKK2 and NF-κB, also existed in OCI-Ly3 but not in OCI-Ly10 [
24], and mutation of
TNFAIP3/A20 was observed in Su-DHL2 [
31]. Collectively, the various mutation statues in each cell lines may be the underlying reasons of the various responses to single agent treatment or drug combination. In order to explain the different toxicity responses, we further examined the intrinsic pathway and extrinsic pathway, and found that apoptosis intrinsic pathway played a predominant role in the synergistic effect. To date, the complex process of apoptosis could be mainly categorized into intrinsic and extrinsic pathway, finally resulting in the DNA fragmentation and cell death. Stimulations from extracellular activated the transmembrane receptor and consequently triggered the activation of extrinsic initiator of caspase 8. In contrast, intrinsic pathway was initiated by mitochondrial events and resulted in the activation of caspase 9 through a more complex procedure. Finally, both extrinsic and intrinsic pathways would go through the execution pathway, which is considered as the end point of apoptosis. Caspase 3 is regarded as the most essential effector in the apoptosis execution pathway. Once it is activated by caspase 8 or caspase 9, the activated caspase 3 will further induce the cleavage of various subtracts such as PARP, which is a nuclear DNA-binding protein functioning as DNA breaks detector. The mitochondrial events of intrinsic pathway taken place in and controlled by Bcl-2 family, which can group into proapoptotic members and antiapoptotic members. At the initiation, Bim plays a crucial role [
32]. Subsequently, oligomerization of Bak and Bax permeabiliaze the mitochondrial membrane and release SMAC and cytochrome c, further activating caspase9 and finally inducing apoptosis. The Bim up-regulation was required in the synergy of lenalidomide and NPI-0052 in MM [
33], as well as in the contributing effect of NVP-Bez235 and HDAC inhibitor in DLBCL [
27]. Here our results also showed that combined NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide resulted in the accumulation of Bim-S, Bim-EL isoforms and Bax. Bad, a member of BH3-only protein, was regarded to exhibit the proapoptosis functions by directly binding and inhibiting anti-apoptotic member Bcl-2 and was reported to be associated with the DBLCL tumorigenesis [
34]. We did not find stronger phosphorylation of p-Bad in the combination treatment, suggesting other members may exert more important efforts in the apoptosis. We next identified the dysregulation of anti-apoptotic members including Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL. The Bcl-xL expression was significantly reduced by drug combination. However, the Bcl-2 expression varied among the cell lines. One reason may partly explain the chaos of Bcl-2. The oncogenic function of Bcl-2 was first reported as its overexpression could promote the c-myc driven proliferation [
35]. Patients who suffered with the “double-hit” DLBCL, representing the translocation of
MYC with the arrangements of
BCL2, BCL6 or
CCND1, often turn out to be with poor prognosis [
36].
C-MYC amplification was found in OCI-Ly3 but not in OCI-Ly10 [
37], and there was no report on the
C-MYC status in Su-DHL2. These led us to assume that the diverse of MYC expression in cell lines causes the Bcl-2 variation in different cell lines. We did not examine the change of anti-apoptotic member Mcl-1 induced by drug combination. To our knowledge, Mcl-1 was elevated in ABC-DLBCL [
38], and many pre-clinical studies have reported its necessity in drug-induced apoptosis of DLBCL [
27,
39,
40]. Altogether, our results demonstrated that the drug combination induced the apoptosis through the intrinsic pathway by elevating the cleaved-caspase 9, Bim and Bax, as well as downregulating the expression of Bcl-xL.
The mechanism involved in the synergetic effect was further depicted by examination of Akt and NF-κB pathway. Since lenalidomide was reported to exert its immunomodulatory function through PI3K/Akt pathway in CLL [
11], we found that lenalidomide only slightly dephosphorylated p-Akt (Ser 473) in OCI-Ly10 and p-Akt (Thr 308) in Su-DHL2, which in line with the study of lenalidomide cytotoxicity in MCL [
41]. Robust downregulation of p-Akt (Ser 473) and p-Akt (Thr 308) was observed in Su-DHL2 and OCI-ly3 by co-treatment, indicating the importance of PI3K/Akt in the synergetic effect. The activation of NF-κB was well considered to support the viability of ABC-DLBCL. Recurrent somatic mutations resulted in the activity of NF-κB varied among cell lines, of which MYD88-L256P got higher NF-κB activity than MYD88-S222R [
16]. Specifically, the expression of NF-κB, p-p65 and p52 was predicted to be a poor prognosis factor of DLBCL in some studies [
42,
43], as well as the p-IΚBα in ABC-DLBCL [
44], but the expression of Rel was reported to be associated with superior clinical outcome [
45]. Tracing the validation of NF-κB pathway in prognosis, function of NF-κB was estimated to cooperate with
FOXP1 and
BLIMP1 in ABC-DLBCL [
46,
47]. Abundant researches indicated that NF-κB monitored the cell life and death through regulating apoptosis program in a caspase-independent way [
48]. Regarded as an anti-apoptosis transcription factor, NF-κB could induce a number of gene expressions, of which the production acts as the apoptosis inhibitor. C-IAPs and c-FLIP are well established NF-κB-regulated proteins. Besides, NF-κB was also found to modulate the Bcl-2 family and pro-/anti-apoptosis pathways through TRAF1 and TRAP2 [
49]. Owing to the important role of NF-κB in cell fate, members involved in the NF-κB pathway were further detected. We found that NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide treatment also substantially downregulated NF-κB pathway. However, we did not assess whether suppression of Akt activity was involved in the regulation of NF-κB, but it seemed that PI3K could only directly affect high level of nuclear NF-κB in DLBCL cell lines [
25]. In contrast, other studies indicated that NF-κB was controlled by PI3K [
50,
51]. In addition, as NVP-Bez235 also inhibited the mTOR pathway, whether NF-κB is independent with mTOR pathway requires further study. Of note, our confirmation of the role of NF-κB in synergetic effect also implied that the mechanism could not be simply explained by the inhibition of Akt and NF-κB pathways, so there must be other biological impacts contributing to this effect.
Cell cycle arrest has been observed in the anti-NHL and anti-CLL activity of PI3K inhibitor as well as lenalidomide [
12,
41,
52‐
54]. In our study, sharp decrease of S phase was observed in Su-DHL2 and OCI-Ly3 cell lines with apparently increase of G0/G1 phase after exposed in both NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide, suggesting the cell cycle arrest contributed to the combined cytotoxicity. Furthermore, in view of importance of CDK2/cyclinA in G1/S phase transition [
55], abrogation of cyclinA and dephosphorylation of p-CDK2 in Su-DHL2 and OCI-Ly3 by cotreatment may contribute to the ultimate cell death. Indeed, deregulation of CDK2 and CDK4 genes has been found to be associated with the transformation process of the transformed DLBCL [
56], additionally,
CDKN2A deletion was predicted for poor prognosis in DLBCL [
57], suggesting the important role of CDK2 in pathogenesis of DLBCL. It was known that p21 and p27 normally arrest cell cycle by suppressing the activity of CDKs, but we did not examine the expression of p27. p21 could be upregulated by lenalidomide [
12], which is in line with our studies, and was even associated with prognosis, for example, p53 + p27 + p21-p16- and low p27 expression was suggested with poor clinical outcomes and shorter survivals [
58,
59]. CyclinD1 was accumulated by NVP-Bez235/lenalidomide cotreatment, which is in contrast with the results of lenalidomide in MCL [
41]. The overexpression of cyclinD1 in DLBCL, accounting for 1.5–15 % [
60‐
62], showed no prognosis value [
63], indicating the cyclinD1 may not be as important as cyclinA/CDK2. The mechanism by which Akt or NF-κB inhibition diminish cyclinA or p-CDK2 in our study is unclear, but Chiron et al reported that PI3K inhibitors induced cell cycle arrest by downregulating CDK4/6 [
64], and NF-κB was reported to be associated with cell cycle regulation [
65].
Finally, our in vivo studies demonstrated that concomitant treatment of NVP-Bez235 and lenalidomide exerted potential antitumor activitity with well tolerant doses. Specifically, although lenalidomide single treatment did not show anti-DLBCL activity in vivo, it significantly enhanced NVP-Bez235 antitumor potency by delaying the tumor growth and prolonging the overall survival. Moreover, the apoptosis and growth inhibition with cotreatment in vitro could also be detected in tumor tissues. Unlikely, NVP-Bez235/lenalidomide cotreatment did not inhibit the phosphorylation of p-NF-κB to a great extent as it did in in vitro studies, suggesting that the mechanism of antitumor activity in intact animals may be more complex than the mechanisms in vitro.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
ZJ and KQ performed the experiments. YO,WW and ZL analyzed the data. XL reviewed the data. ZJ wrote the paper. ZX and JL designed the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.