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Li Y, Yang X, Sun Y, Li Z, Yang W, Ju B, Easton J, Pei D, Cheng C, Lee S, Pui CH, Yu J, Chi H, Yang JJ. Impact of T-cell immunity on chemotherapy response in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood 2022; 140:1507-1521. [PMID: 35675514 PMCID: PMC9523375 DOI: 10.1182/blood.2021014495] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2021] [Accepted: 05/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Although acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is highly responsive to chemotherapy, it is unknown how or which host immune factors influence the long-term remission of this cancer. To this end, we systematically evaluated the effects of T-cell immunity on Ph+ ALL therapy outcomes. Using a murine Arf-/-BCR-ABL1 B-cell ALL model, we showed that loss of T cells in the host drastically increased leukemia relapse after dasatinib or cytotoxic chemotherapy. Although ABL1 mutations emerged early during dasatinib treatment in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised hosts, T-cell immunity was essential for suppressing the outgrowth of drug-resistant leukemia. Bulk and single-cell transcriptome profiling of T cells during therapy pointed to the activation of type 1 immunity-related cytokine signaling being linked to long-term leukemia remission in mice. Consistent with these observations, interferon γ and interleukin 12 directly modulated dasatinib antileukemia efficacy in vivo. Finally, we evaluated peripheral blood immune cell composition in 102 children with ALL during chemotherapy and observed a significant association of T-cell abundance with treatment outcomes. Together, these results suggest that T-cell immunity plays pivotal roles in maintaining long-term remission of ALL, highlighting that the interplay between host immunity and drug resistance can be harnessed to improve ALL chemotherapy outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yizhen Li
- Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Xu Yang
- Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Yu Sun
- Department of Immunology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Zhenhua Li
- Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Wenjian Yang
- Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Bensheng Ju
- Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - John Easton
- Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Deqing Pei
- Department of Biostatistics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Cheng Cheng
- Department of Biostatistics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Shawn Lee
- Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
- Department of Paediatrics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Ching-Hon Pui
- Department of Oncology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
- Hematological Malignancies Program, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Jiyang Yu
- Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Hongbo Chi
- Department of Immunology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
| | - Jun J Yang
- Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
- Department of Oncology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
- Hematological Malignancies Program, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
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2
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Tracy SI, Venkatesh H, Hekim C, Heltemes-Harris LM, Knutson TP, Bachanova V, Farrar MA. Combining nilotinib and PD-L1 blockade reverses CD4+ T-cell dysfunction and prevents relapse in acute B-cell leukemia. Blood 2022; 140:335-348. [PMID: 35275990 PMCID: PMC9335501 DOI: 10.1182/blood.2021015341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2021] [Accepted: 02/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia have experienced significantly improved outcomes due to the advent of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and bispecific T-cell engagers, although a proportion of patients still relapse despite these advances. T-cell exhaustion has been recently suggested to be an important driver of relapse in these patients. Indeed, phenotypic exhaustion of CD4+ T cells is predictive of relapse and poor overall survival in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). Thus, therapies that counter T-cell exhaustion, such as immune checkpoint blockade, may improve leukemia immunosurveillance and prevent relapse. Here, we used a murine model of Ph+ B-ALL as well as human bone marrow biopsy samples to assess the fundamental nature of CD4+ T-cell exhaustion and the preclinical therapeutic potential for combining anti-PD-L1 based checkpoint blockade with tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting the BCR-ABL oncoprotein. Single-cell RNA-sequence analysis revealed that B-ALL induces a unique subset of CD4+ T cells with both cytotoxic and helper functions. Combination treatment with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor nilotinib and anti-PD-L1 dramatically improves long-term survival of leukemic mice. Depletion of CD4+ T cells prior to therapy completely abrogates the survival benefit, implicating CD4+ T cells as key drivers of the protective anti-leukemia immune response. Indeed, treatment with anti-PD-L1 leads to clonal expansion of leukemia-specific CD4+ T cells with the aforementioned helper/cytotoxic phenotype as well as reduced expression of exhaustion markers. These findings support efforts to use PD1/PD-L1 checkpoint blockade in clinical trials and highlight the importance of CD4+ T-cell dysfunction in limiting the endogenous anti-leukemia response.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sean I Tracy
- Center for Immunology
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, Department of Medicine, and
| | - Hrishi Venkatesh
- Center for Immunology
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
| | - Can Hekim
- Center for Immunology
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Orion Corporation, R&D, Immuno-Oncology Unit Tengströminkatu, Turku, Finland; and
| | - Lynn M Heltemes-Harris
- Center for Immunology
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
| | - Todd P Knutson
- Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
| | - Veronika Bachanova
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, Department of Medicine, and
| | - Michael A Farrar
- Center for Immunology
- Masonic Cancer Center
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
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3
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Gozlan EC, Chobrutskiy BI, Blanck G. Exploiting adaptive immune receptor recombination read recoveries from exome files to identify subsets of
ALL
and to establish
TCR
features that correlate with better outcomes. Int J Lab Hematol 2022; 44:883-891. [DOI: 10.1111/ijlh.13862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2021] [Accepted: 04/20/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Etienne C. Gozlan
- Department of Molecular Medicine Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida Tampa Florida USA
| | - Boris I. Chobrutskiy
- Department of Internal Medicine Oregon Health and Science University Hospital Portland Oregon USA
| | - George Blanck
- Department of Molecular Medicine Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida Tampa Florida USA
- Department of Immunology H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute Tampa Florida USA
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4
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Jonart LM, Ebadi M, Basile P, Johnson K, Makori J, Gordon PM. Disrupting the leukemia niche in the central nervous system attenuates leukemia chemoresistance. Haematologica 2019; 105:2130-2140. [PMID: 31624109 PMCID: PMC7395284 DOI: 10.3324/haematol.2019.230334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2019] [Accepted: 10/14/2019] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Protection from acute lymphoblastic leukemia relapse in the central nervous system (CNS) is crucial to survival and quality of life for leukemia patients. Current CNS-directed therapies cause significant toxicities and are only partially effective. Moreover, the impact of the CNS microenvironment on leukemia biology is poorly understood. In this study we showed that leukemia cells associated with the meninges of xenotransplanted mice, or co-cultured with meningeal cells, exhibit enhanced chemoresistance due to effects on both apoptosis balance and quiescence. From a mechanistic standpoint, we found that leukemia chemoresistance is primarily mediated by direct leukemia-meningeal cell interactions and overcome by detaching the leukemia cells from the meninges. Next, we used a co-culture adhesion assay to identify drugs that disrupted leukemia-meningeal adhesion. In addition to identifying several drugs that inhibit canonical cell adhesion targets we found that Me6TREN (Tris[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]amine), a novel hematopoietic stem cell-mobilizing compound, also disrupted leukemia-meningeal adhesion and enhanced the efficacy of cytarabine in treating CNS leukemia in xenotransplanted mice. This work demonstrates that the meninges exert a critical influence on leukemia chemoresistance, elucidates mechanisms of relapse beyond the well-described role of the blood-brain barrier, and identifies novel therapeutic approaches for overcoming chemoresistance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leslie M Jonart
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota.,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Maryam Ebadi
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota.,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Patrick Basile
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota.,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Kimberly Johnson
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota.,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Jessica Makori
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota.,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Peter M Gordon
- Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota .,Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
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5
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Is There Still Room for Cancer Vaccines at the Era of Checkpoint Inhibitors. Vaccines (Basel) 2016; 4:vaccines4040037. [PMID: 27827885 PMCID: PMC5192357 DOI: 10.3390/vaccines4040037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2016] [Revised: 10/23/2016] [Accepted: 10/31/2016] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) blockade is considered to be a revolution in cancer therapy, although most patients (70%–80%) remain resistant to this therapy. It has been hypothesized that only tumors with high mutation rates generate a natural antitumor T cell response, which could be revigorated by this therapy. In patients with no pre-existing antitumor T cells, a vaccine-induced T cell response is a rational option to counteract clinical resistance. This hypothesis has been validated in preclinical models using various cancer vaccines combined with inhibitory pathway blockade (PD-1-PDL1-2, CTLA-4-CD80-CD86). Enhanced T cell infiltration of various tumors has been demonstrated following this combination therapy. The timing of this combination appears to be critical to the success of this therapy and multiple combinations of immunomodulating antibodies (CPI antagonists or costimulatory pathway agonists) have reinforced the synergy with cancer vaccines. Only limited results are available in humans and this combined approach has yet to be validated. Comprehensive monitoring of the regulation of CPI and costimulatory molecules after administration of immunomodulatory antibodies (anti-PD1/PD-L1, anti-CTLA-4, anti-OX40, etc.) and cancer vaccines should help to guide the selection of the best combination and timing of this therapy.
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