Journal
ONCOIMMUNOLOGY
Volume 5, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.1080/2162402X.2015.1062969
Keywords
Cancer; immune checkpoints; T-cell bispecific antibodies T-cell exhaustion; tumor-infiltrating T-cells
Categories
Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Wilhelm Sander-Foundation
- Cancer League Basel
- Basel Translational Medicine Hub
- Roche Innovation Fund
- Huggenberger-Bischoff Foundation for Cancer Research
- Research Funds of the University Basel
- Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel
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T-cell bispecific antibodies (TCBs) are a novel therapeutic tool designed to selectively recruit T-cells to tumor cells and simultaneously activate them. However, it is currently unknown whether the dysfunctional state of T-cells, embedded into the tumor microenvironment, imprints on the therapeutic activity of TCBs. We performed a comprehensive analysis of activation and effector functions of tumor-infiltrating T-cells (TILs) in different tumor types, upon stimulation by a TCB targeting folate receptor 1 and CD3 (FolR1-TCB). We observed a considerable heterogeneity in T-cell activation, cytokine production and tumor cell killing upon exposure to FolR1-TCB among different FolR1-expressing tumors. Of note, tumors presenting with a high frequency of PD-1(hi) TILs displayed significantly impaired tumor cell killing and T-cell function. Further characterization of additional T-cell inhibitory receptors revealed that PD-1(hi) TILs defined a T-cell subset with particularly high levels of multiple inhibitory receptors compared with PD-1(int) and PD-1(neg) T-cells. PD-1 blockade could restore cytokine secretion but not cytotoxicity of TILs in a subset of patients with scarce PD-1(hi) expressing cells; in contrast, patients with abundance of PD-1(hi) expressing T-cells did not benefit from PD-1 blockade. Our data highlight that FolR1-TCB is a promising novel immunotherapeutic treatment option which is capable of activating intratumoral T-cells in different carcinomas. However, its therapeutic efficacy may be substantially hampered by a pre-existing dysfunctional state of T-cells, reflected by abundance of intratumoral PD-1(hi) T-cells. These findings present a rationale for combinatorial approaches of TCBs with other therapeutic strategies targeting T-cell dysfunction.
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