Figure 5.

Autophagy facilitates immune evasion of PDAC via the selective removal of the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) [136,137]. In PDAC cells, MHC-I is degraded via NBR1-mediated selective autophagy, thus reducing the cell surface MHC-I expression and promoting the immune evasion of PDAC cells. Blocking autophagy or lysosome restores the cell surface MHC-I levels in PDAC cells and improves CD8⁺ T cell-mediated PDAC cell recognition and killing, triggering a robust anti-tumor immune response that can be further augmented via combined treatment with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) agents. Figure 5 is adapted from reference [41], the use of which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.