Lactate-Driven Heterogeneity of Immune Checkpoint Expression in Breast and Lung Cancer Cell Lines

Abstract

Tumor-derived lactate is increasingly recognized as an immunosuppressive metabolite within the tumor microenvironment (TME), with emerging evidence highlighting its role beyond metabolism to include epigenetic and immune regulatory functions. While prior studies have primarily focused on individual immune checkpoints, most prominently PD-L1, it remains unclear whether lactate broadly coordinates the expression of multiple immune regulatory pathways across distinct tumor types, particularly in the context of chronic exposure mimicking glycolytic tumors. Here, we investigated the relationship between lactate-producing metabolism and immune checkpoint gene expression in four human cancer cell lines representing breast and lung cancer: MCF7 (estrogen receptor-positive breast), MDA-MB-231 (triple-negative breast), A549 (non-small cell lung), and H82 (small cell lung). By manipulating glucose availability and exposure duration to model acute (6 h) versus chronic (48 h) lactate production, and by pharmacologically inhibiting lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) with oxamate, we quantified extracellular lactate accumulation and assessed transcriptional responses of a panel of immune checkpoints (PD-L1, CD80, CD73, LGALS9, VISTA, PVR, CD47, FGL1, STING) and lactate-associated genes (MCT1, MCT4, LDHA, HCAR1) via qPCR. Chronic high-glucose conditions produced robust, LDH-dependent lactate accumulation and were associated with coordinated, lineage-specific remodeling of multiple checkpoint transcripts, whereas acute exposure induced minimal changes. MDA-MB-231 and A549 cells displayed striking but distinct checkpoint patterns under chronic lactate-producing conditions: MDA-MB-231 cells showed strong co-induction of PD-L1 and CD80, while A549 cells exhibited dominant CD80 induction with modest PD-L1 upregulation. H82 cells upregulated PD-L1 alongside CD73, LGALS9, CD47, and CD80, whereas MCF7 cells demonstrated more modest yet coordinated increases across several checkpoints. Chronic glucose exposure resulted in sustained, LDH-dependent lactate accumulation and coordinated induction of multiple immune checkpoint genes, with distinct lineage-specific patterns, e.g., robust PD-L1/CD80 upregulation in MDA-MB-231 versus CD80 dominance in A549. Unsupervised clustering and principal component analysis revealed that duration of glucose exposure, rather than acute glucose availability, was the primary axis of variation and that MCT4 and HCAR1 clustered with strongly induced checkpoints, consistent with a transcriptional program linking lactate export and sensing to immune regulation. These findings support a model in which lactate acts as an upstream regulator of a broader immune escape program, potentially via mechanisms like lactylation and HCAR1 signaling. This work highlights the limitations of single-checkpoint blockade strategies in solid tumors and underscores the potential of targeting lactate metabolism to enhance immunotherapy efficacy in breast and lung cancers.