scholarly journals The Ovarian Cancer Tumor Immune Microenvironment (TIME) as Target for Therapy: A Focus on Innate Immunity Cells as Therapeutic Effectors

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 3125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denisa Baci ◽  
Annalisa Bosi ◽  
Matteo Gallazzi ◽  
Manuela Rizzi ◽  
Douglas M. Noonan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ovarian Cancer ◽  
T Lymphocytes ◽  
Nk Cells ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
New Era ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Cancer Tumor ◽  
Immune Contexture ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes

Ovarian cancer (OvCA) accounts for one of the leading causes of death from gynecologic malignancy. Despite progress in therapy improvements in OvCA, most patients develop a recurrence after first-line treatments, dependent on the tumor and non-tumor complexity/heterogeneity of the neoplasm and its surrounding tumor microenvironment (TME). The TME has gained greater attention in the design of specific therapies within the new era of immunotherapy. It is now clear that the immune contexture in OvCA, here referred as tumor immune microenvironment (TIME), acts as a crucial orchestrator of OvCA progression, thus representing a necessary target for combined therapies. Currently, several advancements of antitumor immune responses in OvCA are based on the characterization of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, which have been shown to correlate with a significantly improved clinical outcome. Here, we reviewed the literature on selected TIME components of OvCA, such as macrophages, neutrophils, γδ T lymphocytes, and natural killer (NK) cells; these cells can have a role in either supporting or limiting OvCA, depending on the TIME stimuli. We also reviewed and discussed the major (immune)-therapeutic approaches currently employed to target and/or potentiate macrophages, neutrophils, γδ T lymphocytes, and NK cells in the OvCA context.

scholarly journals Cell Transfer Therapy for Cancer: Past, Present, and Future

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Qian ◽  
Xian Wang ◽  
Hongchuan Jin
Keyword(s):  
Dendritic Cells ◽  
T Lymphocytes ◽  
Nk Cells ◽  
Human Cancer ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Cell Transfer ◽  
Human Cancer Cells ◽  
Cancer Tissues ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes

Cell transfer therapy for cancer has made a rapid progress recently and the immunotherapy has been recognized as the fourth anticancer modality after operation, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Lymphocytes used for cell transfer therapy include dendritic cells, natural killer (NK) cells, and T lymphocytes such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). In vitro activated or engineered immune cells can traffic to cancer tissues to elicit persistent antitumor immune response which is very important especially after immunosuppressive treatments such as chemotherapy. In this review, we overviewed recent advances in the exploration of dendritic cells, NK cells, and T cells for the treatment of human cancer cells.

Characterization of the tumor immune microenvironment (TIM) with multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC) in patients with breast cancer following treatment with MK-2206.

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e12109-e12109
Author(s):  
Douglas Kanter Marks ◽  
Robyn Denise Gartrell ◽  
Margueritta El Asmar ◽  
Thomas Hart ◽  
Yan Lu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Cytotoxic T Cells ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Akt Inhibitor ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Immune Biomarkers ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
The Impact

e12109 Background: The PAM (PI3K/Akt/mTOR) signaling pathway has been implicated in the oncogenesis of multiple solid malignancies, including breast cancer (BC). Our aim is to characterize the TIM in a series of patients with operable stage I-III BC treated with MK-2206, an allosteric Akt inhibitor within a presurgical trial. In NCT01319539 , patients received 2 doses of MK-2206 with first dose at day -9 and second at day -2 from surgery. Methods: mIHC was performed using immune biomarkers (DAPI, CD3, CD8, CD4, FOXP3, CD68, Pancytokeratin) on full section (4uM) tissue slides from core biopsy specimens and postsurgical specimens of 10 patients - 5 treated with MK-2206, 5 paired controls. Images were taken using Vectra, a novel pathology workstation and analyzed using inForm software to perform cell classification and phenotyping. T- tests were used to compare biomarker changes before and after MK-2206. Results: Our preliminary analysis demonstrates that patients treated with MK-2206 exhibited an increase in median cytotoxic T-cells (CD3CD8+) density, as compared to the control population , which was statistically significant (87% vs.0.2%, p < 0.05). We did not identify a change in macrophage (CD68) or T helper/T reg (CD4/CD4FOXP3+) density following MK-2206 treatment in this small cohort. We are currently expanding our myeloid panel as well as performing additional tissue analysis to validate our findings. As data is exploratory no correction was made for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are both prognostic of overall survival as well as predictive of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in BC. At present, there are currently both FDA approved therapies, as well as agents in clinical development that exert antineoplastic activity through the PAM pathway. Investigations that endeavour to understand the impact of these therapies on the tumor immune microenvironment may lead to both an increased understanding of the bioactivity of these agents and potentially identify aspects of the immune response which can be exploited in future therapeutics.

scholarly journals Statistical framework for studying the spatial architecture of the tumor immune microenvironment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wilson ◽  
Ram Thapa ◽  
Jordan Creed ◽  
Jonathan Nguyen ◽  
Carlos Moran Segura ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Overall Survival ◽  
T Cells ◽  
Immune Cells ◽  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Cytotoxic T Cells ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Spatial Architecture

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.

scholarly journals Inherited defects in natural killer cells shape tumor immune microenvironment, clinical outcome and immunotherapy response

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue Xu ◽  
Jianqiang Li ◽  
Jinfeng Zou ◽  
Xiaowen Feng ◽  
Chao Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Outcome ◽  
Nk Cells ◽  
Natural Killer ◽  
Antigen Processing ◽  
Cell Activation ◽  
Nk Cell ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Cancer Types

AbstractTumor immune microenvironment (TIME) plays an important role in metastasis and immunotherapy. However, it has been not much known how to classify TIMEs and how TIMEs are genetically regulated. Here we showed that tumors were classified into TIME-rich, -intermediate and -poor subtypes which had significant differences in clinical outcomes, abundances of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), the degree of key immune programs’ activation, and immunotherapy response across 13 common cancer types (n= ∼6,000). Furthermore, TIME-intermediate/-poor patients had significantly more inherited genetic defects (i.e., functional germline variants) in natural killer (NK) cells, antigen processing and presentation (APP) and Wnt signaling pathways than TIME-rich patients, and so did cancer patients than non-cancer individuals (n=4,500). These results suggested that individuals who had more inherited defects in NK cells, APP and Wnt pathways had a higher risk of developing cancers. Moreover, in the 13 common cancers the number of inheritably defected genes of NK cells was significantly negative-correlated with patients’ survival, TILs’ abundance in TIMEs and immunotherapy response, suggesting that inherited defects in NK cells alone were sufficient to shape TILs’ recruitment, clinical outcome, and immunotherapy response, highlighting that NK cell activation was required in the 13 cancer types to drive the recruitment of immune troops into TIMEs. Thus, we proposed that cancer was a disease of NK cell inherited deficiencies. These results had implications in identifying of high-risk individuals based on germline genomes, implementing precision cancer prevention by adoptive transfer of healthy NK cells, and improving existing immunotherapies by combining of adoptive NK cell transfer (i.e., converting TIME-intermediate/-poor tumors into TIME-rich tumors) and anti-PD-1 or CAR-T therapy.ContactEW ([email protected])

scholarly journals MTL-CEBPA Combined with Immunotherapy or RFA Enhances Immunological Anti-Tumor Response in Preclinical Models

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (17) ◽  
pp. 9168
Author(s):  
Kai-Wen Huang ◽  
Choon Ping Tan ◽  
Vikash Reebye ◽  
Cheng Ean Chee ◽  
Dimitris Zacharoulis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tumor Response ◽  
Checkpoint Inhibitor ◽  
Myeloid Cell ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Cancer Model ◽  
Preclinical Models ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Clinical Role ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes

The transcription factor CEBPA is a master regulator of liver homeostasis, myeloid cell differentiation and is downregulated in several oncogenic diseases. MTL-CEBPA is a small activating RNA drug which upregulates gene expression of CEBPA for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We investigate whether MTL-CEBPA has immune modulatory effects by combining MTL-CEBPA with an anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) and/or radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in two preclinical models. First, mice with two flanks of HCC tumors (BNL) were treated with combinations of RFA (right flank), anti-PD-1 or MTL-CEBPA. The reduction of the left flank tumors was most pronounced in the group treated with RFA+anti-PD1+MTL-CEBPA and 7/8 animals responded. This was the only group with a significant increase in CD8+ and CD49b+/CD45+ tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL). Second, a combination of anti-PD-1+MTL-CEBPA was tested in a CT26 colon cancer model and this treatment significantly reduced tumor size, modulated the tumor immune microenvironment and increased TILs. These data suggest a clinical role for combination treatment with CPIs, RFA and MTL-CEBPA through synergistic priming of the immune tumor response, enabling RFA and CPIs to have a pronounced anti-tumor effect including activity in non-treated tumors in the case of RFA.

scholarly journals Dose-Response Association of CD8+ Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes and Survival Time in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer

JAMA Oncology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. e173290 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ellen L. Goode ◽  
Matthew S. Block ◽  
Kimberly R. Kalli ◽  
Robert A. Vierkant ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ovarian Cancer ◽  
Survival Time ◽  
Dose Response ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
High Grade ◽  
Serous Ovarian Cancer ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes

scholarly journals Matter of TIME: the tumor-immune microenvironment of mesothelioma and implications for checkpoint blockade efficacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. e003032
Author(s):  
James Harber ◽  
Tamihiro Kamata ◽  
Catrin Pritchard ◽  
Dean Fennell
Keyword(s):  
Treatment Options ◽  
Immune Checkpoint Blockade ◽  
Checkpoint Blockade ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Incurable Cancer ◽  
Phase Iii Clinical Trials ◽  
Dismal Prognosis ◽  
Tumor Immune Microenvironment ◽  
Cancer Tumor

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an incurable cancer with a dismal prognosis and few effective treatment options. Nonetheless, recent positive phase III trial results for immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in MPM herald a new dawn in the fight to advance effective treatments for this cancer. Tumor mutation burden (TMB) has been widely reported to predict ICB in other cancers, but MPM is considered a low-TMB tumor. Similarly, tumor programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression has not been proven predictive in phase III clinical trials in MPM. Consequently, the precise mechanisms that determine response to immunotherapy in this cancer remain unknown. The present review therefore aimed to synthesize our current understanding of the tumor immune microenvironment in MPM and reflects on how specific cellular features might impact immunotherapy responses or lead to resistance. This approach will inform stratified approaches to therapy and advance immunotherapy combinations in MPM to improve clinical outcomes further.

scholarly journals Nomograms to Predict the Density of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes in Patients With High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danian Dai ◽  
Lili Liu ◽  
He Huang ◽  
Shangqiu Chen ◽  
Bo Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ovarian Cancer ◽  
T Cells ◽  
Menopausal Status ◽  
Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes ◽  
Roc Curves ◽  
Clinicopathological Characteristics ◽  
High Grade ◽  
Serous Ovarian Cancer ◽  
Ki 67 ◽  
Infiltrating Lymphocytes

BackgroundTumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) have important roles in predicting tumor therapeutic responses and progression, however, the method of evaluating TILs is complicated. We attempted to explore the association of TILs with clinicopathological characteristics and blood indicators, and to develop nomograms to predict the density of TILs in patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC).MethodsThe clinical profiles of 197 consecutive postoperative HGSOC patients were retrospectively analyzed. Tumor tissues and matched normal fallopian tubes were immunostained for CD3+, CD8+, and CD4+ T cells on corresponding tissue microarrays and the numbers of TILs were counted using the NIH ImageJ software. The patients were classified into low- or high-density groups for each marker (CD3, CD4, CD8). The associations of the investigated TILs to clinicopathological characteristics and blood indicators were assessed and the related predictors for densities of TILs were used to develop nomograms; which were then further evaluated using the C-index, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and calibration plots.ResultsMenopausal status, estrogen receptor (ER), Ki-67 index, white blood cell (WBC), platelets (PLT), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153) had significant association with densities of tumor-infiltrating CD3+, CD8+, or CD4+ T cells. The calibration curves of the CD3+ (C-index = 0.748), CD8+ (C-index = 0.683) and CD4+ TILs nomogram (C-index = 0.759) demonstrated excellent agreement between predictions and actual observations. ROC curves of internal validation indicated good discrimination for the CD8+ TILs nomogram [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.659, 95% CI 0.582–0.736] and encouraging performance for the CD3+ (AUC= 0.708, 95% CI 0.636–0.781) and CD4+ TILs nomogram (AUC = 0.730, 95% CI 0.659–0.801).ConclusionMenopausal status, ER, Ki-67 index, WBC, PLT, LDH, and CA153 could reflect the densities of T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Novel nomograms are conducive to monitor the immune status of patients with HGSOC and help doctors to formulate the appropriate treatment strategies.

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