Project description:Pre-treatment (PT) and On-Treatment (C3D8) biopsy samples from patients on the Phase I trial of Ipilimumab and Evofosfamide (NCT03098160) were analyzed by RNA sequencing.
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:Single-agent immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint inhibition, has shown remarkable efficacy in selected cancer entities and individual patients. However, most patients fail to respond. This is likely due to diverse immunosuppressive mechanisms acting in a concerted way to suppress the host anti-tumor immune response reducing the efficacy of single-agent immunotherapy. Combination immunotherapy approaches that are effective in such poorly immunogenic tumors mostly rely on precise knowledge of immunological targets on tumor cells by vaccinations or antibodies engineered to directly target those. Thus, creating a target-agnostic combination immunotherapy that is effective in poorly immunogenic tumors for which an immunological target is not known is a major challenge. We show that combined adoptive cellular therapy (ACT) with lymphokine-activated killer cells (LAKs), cytokine-induced killer cells (CIKs), Vγ9Vδ2-T-cells (γδ-T-cells) and adaptive, tumor-specific T-cells (CTLs) display synergistic anti-tumor treatment effects, which is further enhanced by co-treatment with anti-PD1 antibodies. Most strikingly, combination of this ACT with anti-PD1 antibodies, local immunotherapy of agonists against Toll-like receptor 3, 7 and 9 and pre-ACT lymphodepletion, a protocol we named TRI-IT, eradicates established, poorly immunogenic tumors and induces durable anti-tumor immunity in a variety of poorly immunogenic syngeneic, autochthonous, as well as autologous humanized patient-derived models. Mechanistically, we show that TRI-IT co-activates adaptive cellular and humoral, as well as innate anti-tumor immune responses to mediate its anti-tumor effect without inducing off-target toxicity. Our data demonstrate the efficacy of a target-agnostic combination immunotherapy that eradicates and potentially cures established poorly immunogenic tumors.
Project description:This phase Ib trial investigates the side effects of the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab, and to see how well they work in treating patients with cancers that have come back (relapsed) or does not respond to treatment (refractory) and have an increased number of genetic changes. Immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies, such as nivolumab and ipilimumab, may help the body’s immune system attack the cancer, and may interfere with the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Tumor mutational burden (TMB) is the total amount of genetic changes or "mutations" found in tumor cells. Some studies in adults with cancer have shown that patients with a higher TMB (an increased number of genetic changes) are more likely to respond to immunotherapy drugs. There is also evidence that nivolumab and ipilimumab can shrink or stabilize cancer in adult patients with cancer. This study is being done to help doctors learn if the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab can help children, adolescents, and young adults patients live longer.
Project description:The ETCTN 10026 study tested decitabine and ipilimumab for transplant-naive advanced myelodysplastic syndrome/acute myeloid leukemia and relapsed acute myeloid leukemia after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Using single cell RNA sequencing, determinants of response (higher T/NK to myeloid cell ratio in responders) and resistance (insufficient clearance of AML clones) were identified and pharmacodynamics of decitabine (cytoreduction) and ipilimumab (increase in regulatory T cells) characterized.
Project description:The first clinical trial testing the combination of targeted therapy with a BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib and immunotherapy with a CTLA-4 antibody ipilimumab was terminated early due to significant liver toxicities, possibly due to paradoxical activation of the MAPK pathway by BRAF inhibitors in tumors with wild type BRAF. MEK inhibitors can potentiate the MAPK inhibition in tumor, while potentially alleviating the unwanted paradoxical MAPK activation. With a mouse model of syngeneic BRAFV600E driven melanoma (SM1), we tested whether the addition of the MEK inhibitor trametinib would enhance the immunosensitization effects of the BRAF inhibitor dabrafenib. Combination of dabrafenib and trametinib with pmel-1 adoptive cell transfer (ACT) showed complete tumor regression. Bioluminescent imaging and tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) phenotyping showed increased effector infiltration to tumors with dabrafenib, trametinib or dabrafenib plus trametinib with pmel-1 ACT combination. Intracellular IFN gamma staining of the TILs and in vivo cytotoxicity studies showed trametinib was not detrimental to the effector functions in vivo. Dabrafenib increased tumor associated macrophages and T regulatory cells (Tregs) in the tumors, which can be overcome by addition of trametinib. Microarray analysis revealed increased melanoma antigen, MHC expression, and global immune-related gene upregulation with the triple combination therapy. Given the up-regulation of PD-L1 seen with dabrafenib and/or trametinib combined with antigen specific ACT, we tested the triple combination of dabrafenib, trametinib with anti-PD1 therapy, and observed superior anti-tumor effect to SM1 tumors. Our findings support the testing of these combinations in patients with BRAFV600E mutant metastatic melanoma. SM1 tumors were implanted into C57BL/6 mice. Mice were treated by ACT of pmel-1 splenocytes or C57BL/6 splenocytes as control. Pmel-1 treated mice were additionally treated with either vehicle, dabrafenib, trametinib, or combination of both drugs and control mice were treated with vehicle or combination of both drugs.
Project description:Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy intends to only benefit a fraction of cancer patients, and combination immunotherapy with a compound is a promising treatment to overcome this limitation. Here, a tumor immunological phenotype (TIP) gene signature and high throughput sequencing-based high throughput screening (HTS2) were combined to identify combination immunotherapy compounds. We firstly defined a TIP gene signature, which expression pattern distinguishes “cold” tumors from “hot” tumors, and predicts ICB response in cancer patients. Then, after screening thousands of compounds, we identified that aurora kinase inhibitors, including ENMD-2076 and TAK-901, could reprogram the expression pattern of TIP genes from “cold” tumor to “hot” tumor in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells. The treatment of aurora kinase inhibitors on TNBC cells dramatically up-regulates expression of Th1 type chemokine genes CXCL10 and CXCL11, which promotes effective T cells infiltrating into tumor microenvironment and significantly improves anti-PD-1 efficacy in inhibiting the tumor growth of TNBC in preclinical models. Mechanistically, these aurora kinase inhibitors are mainly through inhibiting AURKA-STAT3 signaling pathway to stimulate the expression of CXCL10 and CXCL11. Our study established a high throughput strategy to discover candidate compounds for combination immunotherapy, and suggested the therapeutic potential of combining aurora kinase inhibitors with checkpoint blockade immunotherapy for the treatment of TNBC.
Project description:To study the immune response of the prostate tumor tissues after the leuprolide acetate plus ipilimumab, we compared the gene expression of 6 post-therapy with 3 pre-therapy samples. We identified 690 differential expressed genes (DEGs). Pathway analysis showed that these genes are associated with critical immune pathways such as CTLA4 signaling, antigen presenting etc.