Year: 2021
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Background Cancer immunotherapies, specifically checkpoint blockade therapies, have demonstrated clinical importance for long term patient survival. One of the major limitations to checkpoint blockade therapies, is the low response rate: ~30% with anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD1 treatment. This may be due to heterogeneity of the patients‘ immune system and the tumor microenvironment including T cell inhibitions. There is a clear need to study this phenomenon and develop additional therapies for long term survival to include a broad range of patients. V-domain Immunoglobulin Suppressor of T-cell Activation (VISTA) is a suppressive protein expressed on many cell types in the tumor microenvironment including cytotoxic T cells. VISTA’s role on T cells has been described as maintaining quiescence and peripheral tolerance in a graft vs host disease model, but is not fully understood in context of the tumor microenvironment. Methods We use a series of invivo experiments, including T cell specific VISTA knock outs, to understand the role of VISTA on T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Results Here we show a series of in vivo experiments that suggest VISTA has a potent intrinsic role on T cells and therefore anti-tumor immunity. Using a T cell specific VISTA knock out, our results suggest that the absence of VISTA on T cells in combination with anti-CTLA4 and vaccine is a very powerful tumor suppressor compared to vaccine and anti-CTLA4 treatment alone. These results also indicate that the absence of VISTA alters the phenotype of cytotoxic T cells in several ways including the production of inflammatory cytokines. Conclusions Our preliminary data provides foundation to study VISTA’s role intrinsic to T cells in the tumor microenvironment and how disrupting VISTA’s influence intrinsic to T cells may be advantageous for anti-tumor immunity and long term patient survival. Ethics Approval All in vivo studies were reviewed and approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Approval number 2019–2142).
Authors: Cassandra Gilmour, Li Wang, Juan Dong, Sarah Stone, Keman Zhang, Hieu Ta
Institution: Cleveland Clinic
Language: English
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3213747746