The predictive and prognostic nature of PD-L11 in malignant pleural mesothelioma: a systematic literature review

Dynamics and survival associations of T cell receptor clusters in patients with pleural mesothelioma treated with immunotherapy

BACKGROUND

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are now a first-line treatment option for patients with pleural mesothelioma with the recent approval of ipilimumab and nivolumab. Mesothelioma has a low tumor mutation burden and no robust predictors of survival with ICI. Since ICIs enable adaptive antitumor immune responses, we investigated T-cell receptor (TCR) associations with survival in participants from two clinical trials treated with ICI.

METHODS

We included patients with pleural mesothelioma who were treated with nivolumab (NivoMes, NCT02497508) or nivolumab and ipilimumab (INITIATE, NCT03048474) after first-line therapy. TCR sequencing was performed with the ImmunoSEQ assay in 49 and 39 pretreatment and post-treatment patient peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples. These data were integrated with TCR sequences found in bulk RNAseq data by TRUST4 program in 45 and 35 pretreatment and post-treatment tumor biopsy samples and TCR sequences from over 600 healthy controls. The TCR sequences were clustered into groups of shared antigen specificity using GIANA. Associations of TCR clusters with overall survival were determined by cox proportional hazard analysis.

RESULTS

We identified 4.2 million and 12 thousand complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) sequences from PBMCs and tumors, respectively, in patients treated with ICI. These CDR3 sequences were integrated with 2.1 million publically available CDR3 sequences from healthy controls and clustered. ICI-enhanced T-cell infiltration and expanded T cell diversity in tumors. Cases with TCR clones in the top tertile in the pretreatment tissue or in circulation had significantly better survival than the bottom two tertiles (p<0.04). Furthermore, a high number of shared TCR clones between pretreatment tissue and in circulation was associated with improved survival (p=0.01). To potentially select antitumor clusters, we filtered for clusters that were (1) not found in healthy controls, (2) recurrent in multiple patients with mesothelioma, and (3) more prevalent in post-treatment than pretreatment samples. The detection of two-specific TCR clusters provided significant survival benefit compared with detection of 1 cluster (HR<0.001, p=0.026) or the detection of no TCR clusters (HR=0.10, p=0.002). These two clusters were not found in bulk tissue RNA-seq data and have not been reported in public CDR3 databases.

CONCLUSIONS

We identified two unique TCR clusters that were associated with survival on treatment with ICI in patients with pleural mesothelioma. These clusters may enable approaches for antigen discovery and inform future targets for design of adoptive T cell therapies.

Three distinct mechanisms underlying human γδ T cell-mediated cytotoxicity against malignant pleural mesothelioma

Introduction

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare and highly aggressive thoracic tumor with poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Although immune checkpoint inhibitors exhibit a promising effect in some patients with unresectable MPM in clinical trials, the majority of MPM patients show only modest response rates to the currently available treatments. It is thus imperative to develop novel and innovative therapeutic modalities for MPM, including immune effector cell-based therapies.

Methods

γδ T cells were expanded using tetrakis-pivaloyloxymethyl 2-(thiazole-2-ylamino) ethylidene-1,1-bisphosphonate (PTA) and interleukin-2, and the therapeutic potential of γδ T cells was examined through analyzing cell surface markers and cellular cytotoxicity against MPM in vitro using a europium chelate-based time-resolved fluorescence assay system and a luciferase-based luminescence assay system.

Results and discussion

We successfully expanded γδ T cells from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of healthy donors and MPM patients. γδ T cells expressed natural killer receptors such as NKG2D and DNAM-1 and exhibited a moderate level of cytotoxicity to MPM cells in the absence of antigens. The inclusion of PTA, (E)-4-hydroxy-3- methylbut-2-enyl diphosphate (HMBPP) or zoledronic acid (ZOL) induced a TCR-dependent cytotoxicity in γδ T cells and secreted interferon-γ (IFN-γ). In addition, γδ T cells expressing CD16 exhibited a significant level of cytotoxicity against MPM cells in the presence of an anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mAb, at lower concentrations than in clinical settings, whereas a detectable level of IFN-γ was not produced. Taken together, γδ T cells showed cytotoxic activity against MPM in three distinct mechanisms through NK receptors, TCRs and CD16. Since major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules are not involved in the recognition, both autologous and allogeneic γδ T cells could be used for the development of γδ T cell-based adoptive immunotherapy for MPM.