scholarly journals Immunophenotypes Based on the Tumor Immune Microenvironment Allow for Unsupervised Penile Cancer Patient Stratification

Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengbiao Chu ◽  
Kai Yao ◽  
Jiangli Lu ◽  
Yijun Zhang ◽  
Keming Chen ◽  
...  

The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) plays an important role in penile squamous cell carcinoma (peSCC) pathogenesis. Here, the immunophenotype of the TIME in peSCC was determined by integrating the expression patterns of immune checkpoints (programmed cell death-1 (PD-1)/programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1), cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4), and Siglec-15) and the components of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, including CD8+ or Granzyme B+ T cells, FOXP3+ regulatory T cells, and CD68+ or CD206+ macrophages, in 178 patients. A high density of Granzyme B, FOXP3, CD68, CD206, PD-1, and CTLA-4 was associated with better disease-specific survival (DSS). The patients with diffuse PD-L1 tumor cell expression had worse prognoses than those with marginal or negative PD-L1 expression. Four immunophenotypes were identified by unsupervised clustering analysis, based on certain immune markers, which were associated with DSS and lymph node metastasis (LNM) in peSCC. There was no significant relationship between the immunophenotypes and high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) infection. However, the hrHPV–positive peSCC exhibited a higher density of stromal Granzyme B and intratumoral PD-1 than the hrHPV–negative tumors (p = 0.049 and 0.002, respectively). In conclusion, the immunophenotypes of peSCC were of great value in predicting LNM and prognosis, and may provide support for clinical stratification management and immunotherapy intervention.

2019 ◽  
Vol 131 ◽  
pp. 01022
Author(s):  
Feixuan Wu

Immunotherapy has become the main stream in cancer treatment nowadays. It includes T cell, NK cell targeted therapy, as well as antibody targeted therapy and its derivatives. Recently immune checkpoints blockade (ICB) has been developed, which are said to be a better method in treatment. The release of negative regulators of immune activation has resulted in unprecedented rates of long-lasting tumor responses in patients with a variety of cancers. This can be achieved by antibodies blocking the cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (CTLA-4), the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PDL-1) pathway or the lymphocyte-activated gene-3 (LAG-3) pathway, either alone or in combination. Improvement of treatment benefits from the research in molecular mechanisms of ICB. For example, mechanism of LAG-3 and its valid ligands is unclear, which leads to a misunderstanding that the antibody might be ineffective. After finding these results demonstrating that fibrinogen-like protein 1(FGL1) is an important functional ligand of LAG-3, it reveals the role of this LAG 3-FGL1 pathway in tumor immunity. Although there are some potential side effects, these therapies turn out to have lots of positive effects on most patients. Therefore, this review summarizes the latest advances, hoping that it may have a great contribution to the cancer treatment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian A. Marin-Acevedo ◽  
ErinMarie O. Kimbrough ◽  
Yanyan Lou

AbstractThe immune system is the core defense against cancer development and progression. Failure of the immune system to recognize and eliminate malignant cells plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cancer. Tumor cells evade immune recognition, in part, due to the immunosuppressive features of the tumor microenvironment. Immunotherapy augments the host immune system to generate an antitumor effect. Immune checkpoints are pathways with inhibitory or stimulatory features that maintain self-tolerance and assist with immune response. The most well-described checkpoints are inhibitory in nature and include the cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated molecule-4 (CTLA-4), programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1), and programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1). Molecules that block these pathways to enhance the host immunologic activity against tumors have been developed and become standard of care in the treatment of many malignancies. Only a small percentage of patients have meaningful responses to these treatments, however. New pathways and molecules are being explored in an attempt to improve responses and application of immune checkpoint inhibition therapy. In this review, we aim to elucidate these novel immune inhibitory pathways, potential therapeutic molecules that are under development, and outline particular advantages and challenges with the use of each one of them.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wilson ◽  
Ram Thapa ◽  
Jordan Creed ◽  
Jonathan Nguyen ◽  
Carlos Moran Segura ◽  
...  

AbstractNew technologies, such as multiplex immunofluorescence microscopy (mIF), are being developed and used for the assessment and visualization of the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME). These assays produce not only an estimate of the abundance of immune cells in the TIME, but also their spatial locations; however, there are currently few approaches to analyze the spatial context of the TIME. Thus, we have developed a framework for the spatial analysis of the TIME using Ripley’s K, coupled with a permutation-based framework to estimate and measure the departure from complete spatial randomness (CSR) as a measure of the interactions between immune cells. This approach was then applied to ovarian cancer using mIF collected on intra-tumoral regions of interest (ROIs) and tissue microarrays (TMAs) from 158 high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma patients in the African American Cancer Epidemiology Study (AACES) (94 subjects on TMAs resulting in 259 tissue cores; 91 subjects with 254 ROIs). Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to determine the association of abundance and spatial clustering of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, cytotoxic T-cells, and regulatory T-cells, and overall survival. We found that EOC patients with high abundance and low spatial clustering of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and cytotoxic T-cells in their tumors had the best overall survival. In contrast, patients with low levels of regulatory T-cells but with a high level of spatial clustering (compare to those with a low level of spatial clustering) had better survival. These findings underscore the prognostic importance of evaluating not only immune cell abundance but also the spatial contexture of the immune cells in the TIME. In conclusion, the application of this spatial analysis framework to the study of the TIME could lead to the identification of immune content and spatial architecture that could aid in the determination of patients that are likely to respond to immunotherapies.


ESMO Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. e000544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Solinas ◽  
Chunyan Gu-Trantien ◽  
Karen Willard-Gallo

Inducible T cell costimulator (ICOS, cluster of differentiation (CD278)) is an activating costimulatory immune checkpoint expressed on activated T cells. Its ligand, ICOSL is expressed on antigen-presenting cells and somatic cells, including tumour cells in the tumour microenvironment. ICOS and ICOSL expression is linked to the release of soluble factors (cytokines), induced by activation of the immune response. ICOS and ICOSL binding generates various activities among the diversity of T cell subpopulations, including T cell activation and effector functions and when sustained also suppressive activities mediated by regulatory T cells. This dual role in both antitumour and protumour activities makes targeting the ICOS/ICOSL pathway attractive for enhancement of antitumour immune responses. This review summarises the biological background and rationale for targeting ICOS/ICOSL in cancer together with an overview of the principal ongoing clinical trials that are testing it in combination with anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 and anti-programmed cell death-1 or anti-programmed cell death ligand-1 based immune checkpoint blockade.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Yanqiu Wang ◽  
Yunkai Xie ◽  
Tianyu Dai ◽  
Mingjun Fan ◽  
...  

AbstractThe mortality rate of ovarian cancer (OC) remains the highest among all gynecological malignancies. Platinum-based chemotherapies are effective in treating most OC cases. However, chemoresistance is still a major challenge for successful OC treatments. Emerging evidence has highlighted that the modulation of the tumor immune microenvironment is involved in chemoresistance, but the mechanism remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether resistance to cisplatin (CDDP), the standard treatment for OC, is due to the remodeling of the tumor immune microenvironment by the transcription factor EB (TFEB). We hypothesized that TFEB is not essential for tumor survival but is associated with CDDP resistance. We collected 20 tissue samples of OC patients who had not undergone chemotherapy or radiotherapy prior to surgery. We cultured OC cell lines and performed cell transfection and assays as well as analytical, fluorescence microscopy, and immunohistochemical techniques to explore a novel function of TFEB in remodeling the tumor immune microenvironment in OC. We found a positive correlation between TFEB and programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), PD-L2, and HLA-A expression in OC cells and tissues. We also found that CDDP treatment induced TFEB nuclear translocation, thus increasing PD-L1 and PD-L2 expression to foster an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, which mediates tumor immune evasion and drug resistance. Interestingly, TFEB also regulated HLA-A expression, which increases the tumor immunogenicity of OC. Finally, in a syngenic murine model of OC, we observed the therapeutic benefit of CDDP plus programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) inhibitor, which enhanced the cytolytic activity of CD8+ T cells and inhibited tumor growth. Our study illustrates the important role of TFEB in regulating the tumor immune microenvironment in OC.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10s1 ◽  
pp. CMO.S34540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula García-Teijido ◽  
María Luque Cabal ◽  
Ignacio Peláez Fernández ◽  
Yolanda Fernández Pérez

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous tumor. There is increasing evidence of the role of tumor lymphocytic immune infiltrates in this subtype of breast cancer. Robust levels of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) have been associated with improved disease-free and overall survival rates in TNBC patients with and without any treatment. Recent efforts have been made to develop a standardized methodology for evaluating TILs. The presence of TILs in the breast tumor microenvironment can also predict responses not only to neoadjuvant but also to adjuvant chemotherapy treatments. High numbers of TILs correlate with increased pathological complete responses (pCR) in TNBC. TILs are prognostic and predictive of response to standard therapies; thus, the immune system appears to play an active role in a subgroup of breast cancer. There is an increasing interest in directly targeting the immune system as part of breast cancer therapy, mainly in patients with TNBC. New immune modulatory agents, including immune checkpoints inhibitors, have shown promising activity in a subgroup of metastatic TNBC. Increased programmed cell death protein 1 ligand (PD-L1) expression on the surface of TNBC provides the rationale for implementing therapeutic strategies targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis in TNBC. The programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab, and the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab have shown promising results in clinical trials.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1079-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
AGNIESZKA KOLACINSKA ◽  
BARBARA CEBULA-OBRZUT ◽  
LUKASZ PAKULA ◽  
JUSTYNA CHALUBINSKA-FENDLER ◽  
ALINA MORAWIEC-SZTANDERA ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 105 (9) ◽  
pp. e3207-e3223
Author(s):  
Zihao Wang ◽  
Xiaopeng Guo ◽  
Lu Gao ◽  
Kan Deng ◽  
Wei Lian ◽  
...  

Abstract Context The tumor immune microenvironment is associated with clinical outcomes and immunotherapy responsiveness. Objective To investigate the intratumoral immune profile of pituitary adenomas (PAs) and its clinical relevance and to explore a novel immune classification for predicting immunotherapy responsiveness. Design, Patients, and Methods The transcriptomic data from 259 PAs and 20 normal pituitaries were included for analysis. The ImmuCellAI algorithm was used to estimate the abundance of 24 types of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) and the expression of immune checkpoint molecules (ICMs). Results The distributions of TIICs differed between PAs and normal pituitaries and varied among PA subtypes. T cells dominated the immune microenvironment across all subtypes of PAs. The tumor size and patient age were correlated with the TIIC abundance, and the ubiquitin-specific protease 8 (USP8) mutation in corticotroph adenomas influenced the intratumoral TIIC distributions. Three immune clusters were identified across PAs based on the TIIC distributions. Each cluster of PAs showed unique features of ICM expression that were correlated with distinct pathways related to tumor development and progression. CTLA4/CD86 expression was upregulated in cluster 1, whereas programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death 1 ligand 2 (PD1/PD-L2) expression was upregulated in cluster 2. Clusters 1 and 2 exhibited a “hot” immune microenvironment and were predicted to exhibit higher immunotherapy responsiveness than cluster 3, which exhibited an overall “cold” immune microenvironment. Conclusions We summarized the immune profile of PAs and identified 3 novel immune clusters. These findings establish a foundation for further immune studies on PAs and provide new insights into immunotherapy strategies for PAs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (36) ◽  
pp. 4758-4784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Wilson ◽  
Magdalena Plebanski ◽  
Andrew N. Stephens

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and current research has focused on the discovery of novel approaches to effectively treat this disease. Recently, a considerable number of clinical trials have demonstrated the success of immunomodulatory therapies for the treatment of cancer. Monoclonal antibodies can target components of the immune system to either i) agonise co-stimulatory molecules, such as CD137, OX40 and CD40; or ii) inhibit immune checkpoints, such as cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4), programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and its corresponding ligand PD-L1. Although tumour regression is the outcome for some patients following immunotherapy, many patients still do not respond. Furthermore, chemotherapy has been the standard of care for most cancers, but the immunomodulatory capacity of these drugs has only recently been uncovered. The ability of chemotherapy to modulate the immune system through a variety of mechanisms, including immunogenic cell death (ICD), increased antigen presentation and depletion of regulatory immune cells, highlights the potential for synergism between conventional chemotherapy and novel immunotherapy. In addition, recent pre-clinical trials indicate dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) enzyme inhibition, an enzyme that can regulate immune cell trafficking to the tumour microenvironment, as a novel cancer therapy. The present review focuses on the current immunological approaches for the treatment of cancer, and summarizes clinical trials in the field of immunotherapy as a single treatment and in combination with chemotherapy.


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