Peripheral blood mononuclear cells of breast cancer patients can be reprogrammed to enhance anti-HER-2/neu reactivity and overcome myeloid-derived suppressor cells [poster abstract]

Authors

Kyle K. Payne, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow
Christine K. Zoon, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow
Wen Wan, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow
Khin Marlar, Roswell Park Cancer Center
Rebecca C. Keim, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow
Mehrab Nasirir Kenari, Roswell Park Cancer Center
Latif Kazim, Roswell Park Cancer Center
Harry D. Bear, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow
Masoud H. Manjili, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2013

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

Volume

1

Issue

1

DOI of Original Publication

doi:10.1186/2051-1426-1-S1-P170

Comments

Orginally published at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1186/2051-1426-1-S1-P170

Date of Submission

August 2014

Abstract

Barriers limiting the efficacy of adoptive cellular therapy (ACT) for breast cancer patients include immune suppression mediated by myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and a low frequency of tumor-reactive memory T cells (Tm). Recently, we developed an ex vivo protocol to reprogram tumor-reactive murine splenocytes; these cells were found to be resistant to MDSC suppression and protected FVBN202 mice from tumor challenge. Here, we evaluated the clinical applicability of reprogramming tumor-sensitized PBMCs isolated from patients with early stage breast cancer by treatment with bryostatin 1 and ionomycin (B/I) combined with IL-2, IL-7 and IL-15. Our data demonstrate that reprogrammed cells are enriched with Tm cells (n=5; p=0.006), as well as activated CD56⁺(n=6; p=0.003) and CD161⁺ (n=4; p=0.02) NKT cells, and demonstrate expansion in total cell numbers (n=16; p=0.003) compared to baseline cells. Reprogrammed PBMCs displayed enhanced HER-2/neu-specific IFN-γ producing immune responses (n=6; p=0.04); non-reprogrammed control PBMC IFN-γ production was not significant (n=6; p=0.4). Furthermore, high-throughput sequencing analysis of the T cell receptor (TcR) Vβ in one patient demonstrated clonal expansion of specific TcR VJ recombination events resulting from cellular reprogramming, suggestive of an enriched frequency of specific tumor antigen-primed T cell clones. Interestingly, reprogrammed T cells were resistant to autologous CD33⁺ CD11b⁺ HLA-DR^lo/- MDSCs, as determined by further enhanced HER-2/neu-specific IFN-γ secretion in the presence of MDSCs (n=6; p=0.03). Activated CD161⁺ NKT cells comprising 3% or greater of total reprogrammed cells rendered T cells resistant to MDSCs (n=3; p=0.02). Upregulation of NKG2D expression on CD161⁺(n=5; p=0.0006) and CD56⁺ (n=5; p=0.04) NKT cells resulted from cellular reprogramming. Therefore, NKG2D signaling was blocked using anti-NKG2D blocking antibody in our co-culture system, resulting in the abrogation of resistance to MDSCs as determined by blunted IFN-γ secretion (n=3; p=0.04). Finally, the phenotype of MDSCs after co-culture with reprogrammed PBMC was examined; we observed downregulation of CD11b expression (n=3; p=0.02) concomitant with HLA-DR upregulation on MDSCs (n=3; p=0.001); suggestive of induced maturation of MDSCs into Dendritic Cells (DC). The results of our study offer the following strategies to improve ACT of breast cancer: i) inclusion of activated NKT cells in ACT to overcome MDSC suppression by inducing MDSC maturation into DCs, and ii) PBMC reprogramming to enrich the frequency of tumor-reactive Tm cells.

Rights

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Is Part Of

VCU Massey Cancer Center Publications