CYPD limits HR⁺ mammary carcinogenesis in mice

Mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT)-driven necrosis and necroptosis are regulated variants of cell death that can drive inflammation or even promote antigen-specific immune responses. In oncological settings, indolent inflammatory reactions have been consistently associated with accelerated disease progression and resistance to treatment. Conversely, adaptive immune responses specific for tumor-associated antigens are generally restraining tumor development and contribute to treatment sensitivity. Here, we harnessed female C57BL/6J mice lacking key regulators of MPT-driven necrosis and necroptosis to investigate whether whole-body defects in these pathways would influence mammary carcinogenesis as driven by subcutaneous slow-release medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA, M) pellets plus orally administered 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA, D), an in vivo model that recapitulates multiple facets of the biology and immunology of human hormone receptor positive (HR⁺) breast cancer. Our data demonstrate that female mice bearing a whole-body, homozygous deletion in peptidylprolyl isomerase F (Ppif), which encodes a key regulator of MPT-driven necrosis commonly known as CYPD, but not female mice with systemic defects in necroptosis as imposed by the whole body-deletion homozygous of receptor-interacting serine-threonine kinase 3 (Ripk3) or mixed lineage kinase domain like pseudokinase (Mlkl), are more susceptible to M/D-driven carcinogenesis than their wild-type counterparts. These findings point to CYPD as to an oncosuppressive protein that restrains HR⁺ mammary carcinogenesis in mice, at least potentially via MPT-driven necrosis.