Project description:We analyzed cell-free microRNAs (cfmiRs) in blood, tissue, and urine samples of melanoma patients to find potential biomarkers for monitoring and assessing early detection of melanoma metastasis. This study demonstrates that identifying cfmiR signatures in body fluids may allow for detection and assessment of melanoma brain metastasis (MBM) and metastatic melanoma patients undergoing checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy treatments.
Project description:Immune checkpoint blockade has revolutionized cancer therapy. In particular, inhibition of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is effective for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and other cancers. Despite a dramatic increase in progression-free survival, a large proportion of patients do not show durable response. Therefore, predictive biomarkers of clinical response are urgently needed. Here, we employed high-dimensional single cell mass cytometry and a bioinformatics pipeline for the in-depth characterization of the immune cell subsets in the peripheral blood of metastatic melanoma patients before and after anti-PD-1 immunotherapy. During therapy, we observed a clear treatment response to immunotherapy in the T cell compartment. However, prior to commending therapy a strong predictor of progression free and overall survival in response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy was the frequency of CD14+CD16-HLA-DRhi monocytes. We could confirm this by conventional flow cytometry in an independent validation cohort and propose this as a novel predictive biomarker for therapy decisions in the clinic. In order to determine whether there are cell intrinsic changes in the monocyte signature, we performed RNA sequencing on sorted CD14+CD16-HLA-DRhi cells from HD, NR and R at baseline. Representative samples (n=4, each) of responders/non responders/ and healthy donors were selected from archival samples stored in the dermatology biobank according to the same clinical criteria used in the discovery and validation cohorts for CyTOF and FACS analysis. CD14+CD16-HLA-DRhiLin- (CD3, CD4, CD19, CD45RO) monocytes were sorted from frozen PBMC form blood samples from HD, R and NR at baseline.
Project description:Immunotherapy, such as anti-PD1, has improved the survival of patients with metastatic melanoma; However, predicting which patients will respond to immunotherapy is still unknown. In this study we analyzed pre-immunotherapy treated tumors from 52 patients with metastatic melanoma and monitored their response based on RECIST 1.1 criteria. The responders group contained 21 patients that had a complete or partial response, while the 31 non-responders had stable or progressive disease. Whole exome sequencing (WES) was used to identify biomarkers of anti-PD1 response from somatic mutations between the two groups. Variants in codons G34 and G41 in NFKBIE, a negative regulator of NF-kB, were found exclusively in the responders. NKBIE-related genes within the responder group were also enriched compared to the non-responders. Patients that harbored NFKBIE-related gene mutations also had a higher mutational burden, decreased tumor volume with treatment, and increased progression-free survival. RNA sequencing on a subsection of tumor samples identified differential expression of the TNFA signaling via NFKB pathway, which includes CD83. By overexpressing NFKBIEG34E we were able to demonstrate this mutation is related to increased NF-kB activity, including increased CD83 protein expression when compared with the wildtype. These results suggest that increased NF-kB signaling as a consequence of an NFKBIE mutation may contribute to a favorable anti-PD1 treatment response, including a possible novel role of CD83 in solid tumors.
Project description:Immune checkpoint inhibitors are used to restore or augment antitumor immune response and show great promise in treatment of melanoma and other types of cancers. However, only a relatively small percentage of patients are fully responsive to immune checkpoint inhibition, mostly due to tumor heterogeneity and primary resistance to therapy. Both of these features are largely driven by accumulation of patient-specific mutations, pointing to the need for personalized approaches in diagnostics and immunotherapy. Proteogenomics integrates patient-specific genomic and proteomic data to study cancer development and resistance mechanisms, as well as tumor heterogeneity in individual patients. Here, we use a proteogenomic approach to characterize the mutational landscape of samples derived from four clinical melanoma patients at the genomic, proteomic and phosphoproteomic level. Integration of datasets enabled identification and quantification of an extensive number of sample-specific amino acid variants, among them many were not previously reported in melanoma. We detected a disproportional number of alternate peptides between treated and untreated (naïve) samples with a high potential to influence signal transduction. This is one of the first proteogenomic study designed to study the mutational landscape of patient-derived melanoma tissue samples in response to immunotherapy.
Project description:Immunotherapy efficacy is limited in melanoma, and combinations of immunotherapies with other modalities have yielded limited improvements but also adverse events requiring cessation of treatment. In addition to ineffective patient stratification, efficacy is impaired by paucity of intratumoral immune cells (itICs)—thus, effective strategies to safely increase itICs are needed. We report that dietary administration of L-fucose induces fucosylation and cell surface enrichment of the MHC-II protein HLA-DRB1 in melanoma cells, triggering CD4+T cell-mediated increases in ItICs and anti-tumor immunity, enhancing immune checkpoint blockade responses. Melanoma fucosylation and fucosylated HLA-DRB1 associate with intratumoral T cell abundance and anti-PD1 responder status in patient melanoma specimens, suggesting the potential use of melanoma fucosylation as a strategy for stratifying patients for immunotherapies. Our findings demonstrate that fucosylation is a key mediator of anti-tumor immunity, and importantly, suggest that L-fucose is a powerful agent for safely increasing ItICs and immunotherapy efficacy in melanoma.
Project description:Immunotherapy efficacy is limited in melanoma, and combinations of immunotherapies with other modalities have yielded limited improvements but also adverse events requiring cessation of treatment. In addition to ineffective patient stratification, efficacy is impaired by paucity of intratumoral immune cells (itICs)—thus, effective strategies to safely increase itICs are needed. We report that dietary administration of L-fucose induces fucosylation and cell surface enrichment of the MHC-II protein HLA-DRB1 in melanoma cells, triggering CD4+T cell-mediated increases in ItICs and anti-tumor immunity, enhancing immune checkpoint blockade responses. Melanoma fucosylation and fucosylated HLA-DRB1 associate with intratumoral T cell abundance and anti-PD1 responder status in patient melanoma specimens, suggesting the potential use of melanoma fucosylation as a strategy for stratifying patients for immunotherapies. Our findings demonstrate that fucosylation is a key mediator of anti-tumor immunity, and importantly, suggest that L-fucose is a powerful agent for safely increasing ItICs and immunotherapy efficacy in melanoma.
Project description:Immunotherapy efficacy is limited in melanoma, and combinations of immunotherapies with other modalities have yielded limited improvements but also adverse events requiring cessation of treatment. In addition to ineffective patient stratification, efficacy is impaired by paucity of intratumoral immune cells (itICs)—thus, effective strategies to safely increase itICs are needed. We report that dietary administration of L-fucose induces fucosylation and cell surface enrichment of the MHC-II protein HLA-DRB1 in melanoma cells, triggering CD4+T cell-mediated increases in ItICs and anti-tumor immunity, enhancing immune checkpoint blockade responses. Melanoma fucosylation and fucosylated HLA-DRB1 associate with intratumoral T cell abundance and anti-PD1 responder status in patient melanoma specimens, suggesting the potential use of melanoma fucosylation as a strategy for stratifying patients for immunotherapies. Our findings demonstrate that fucosylation is a key mediator of anti-tumor immunity, and importantly, suggest that L-fucose is a powerful agent for safely increasing ItICs and immunotherapy efficacy in melanoma.
Project description:The clinical success of immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in both resected and metastatic melanoma has confirmed the validity of therapeutic strategies that boost the immune system to counteract cancer. However, half of patients with metastatic disease treated with even the most aggressive regimen do not derive durable clinical benefit. Thus, there is a critical need for predictive biomarkers that can identify individuals who are unlikely to benefit with high accuracy, so that these patients may be spared the toxicity of treatment without the likely benefit of response. Ideally, such an assay would have a fast turnaround time and minimal invasiveness. Here, we utilize a novel platform that combines mass spectrometry with an artificial intelligence-based data processing engine to interrogate the blood glycoproteome in melanoma patients before receiving ICI therapy. We identify 143 biomarkers that demonstrate a difference in expression between the patients who died within six months of starting ICI treatment and those who remained progression-free for three years. We then develop a glycoproteomic classifier that predicts benefit of immunotherapy (HR=2.7; p=0.026) and achieves a significant separation of patients in an independent cohort (HR=5.6; p=0.027). To understand how circulating glycoproteins may affect efficacy of treatment, we analyze the differences in glycosylation structure and discover a fucosylation signature in patients with shorter overall survival (OS). We then develop a fucosylation-based model that effectively stratifies patients (HR=3.5; p=0.0066). Together, our data demonstrate the utility of plasma glycoproteomics for biomarker discovery and prediction of ICI benefit in patients with metastatic melanoma and suggest that protein fucosylation may be a determinant of anti-tumor immunity.
Project description:Metastatic uveal melanoma (UM) remains challenging to treat, with objective response rates to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) much lower than in primary cutaneous melanoma (CM). Besides a lower mutational burden, the overall immune-excluded tumor microenvironment of UM might contribute to the poor response rate. We therefore aimed at targeting deficiency in argininosuccinate synthase 1, which is a key metabolic feature of UM. This study aimed at investigating safety and tolerability of a triple combination consisting of ipilimumab and nivolumab immunotherapy and the metabolic therapy ADI-PEG 20. 9 patients were enrolled in this pilot study. The combination therapy was safe and tolerable with absence of immune related adverse events (irAE) of special interest but with 4 of 9 patients experiencing a CTCAE grade 3 AE. No objective responses were observed. All except one patient developed anti-drug antibodies (ADA) within a month of treatment initiation and therefore did not maintain arginine depletion. Further, an IFNg-dependent inflammatory signature was observed in metastatic lesions in patients pre-treated with ICB compared with patients with no pretreatment. Multiplex immunohistochemistry demonstrated variable presence of tumor infiltrating CD8 lymphocytes and PD-L1 expression at baseline in metastases.
Project description:Immunotherapy efficacy is limited in melanoma, and combinations of immunotherapies with other modalities have yielded limited improvements but also adverse events requiring cessation of treatment. In addition to ineffective patient stratification, efficacy is impaired by paucity of intratumoral immune cells (itICs)—thus, effective strategies to safely increase itICs are needed. We report that dietary administration of L-fucose induces fucosylation and cell surface enrichment of the MHC-II protein HLA-DRB1 in melanoma cells, triggering CD4+T cell-mediated increases in ItICs and anti-tumor immunity, enhancing immune checkpoint blockade responses. Melanoma fucosylation and fucosylated HLA-DRB1 associate with intratumoral T cell abundance and anti-PD1 responder status in patient melanoma specimens, suggesting the potential use of melanoma fucosylation as a strategy for stratifying patients for immunotherapies. Our findings demonstrate that fucosylation is a key mediator of anti-tumor immunity, and importantly, suggest that L-fucose is a powerful agent for safely increasing ItICs and immunotherapy efficacy in melanoma.