Exploiting viral infection/vaccination to focus high-affinity T cell populations into tumors using oncolytic viro-immunotherapy.

ABSTRACT: Immune tolerance restricts the number of T cells with significant affinity for self-tumor-associated antigens (TAAs), thereby limiting successful cancer immunotherapy through an inability to generate populations of high-affinity anti-tumor T cells. In contrast, viral infection/vaccination primes and expands high-affinity effector and memory T cells against viral antigens. We show here that it is possible to exploit population-wide preexisting, anti-viral memory recall responses against SARS-CoV-2 antigens to focus a high-affinity, immunodominant T cell response into tumors by oncolytic virus (OV)-mediated or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-mediated delivery of viral antigens that are not themselves related to TAAs. Heterologous prime and OV/boost led to CD8⁺ T cell-dependent tum

SUBMITTER: Rios AV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12502006 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature