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Expression of tumour-specific antigens underlies cancer immunoediting.

ABSTRACT: Cancer immunoediting is a process by which immune cells, particularly lymphocytes of the adaptive immune system, protect the host from the development of cancer and alter tumour progression by driving the outgrowth of tumour cells with decreased sensitivity to immune attack. Carcinogen-induced mouse models of cancer have shown that primary tumour susceptibility is thereby enhanced in immune-compromised mice, whereas the capacity for such tumours to grow after transplantation into wild-type mice is reduced. However, many questions about the process of cancer immunoediting remain unanswered, in part because of the known antigenic complexity and heterogeneity of carcinogen-induced tumours. Here we adapted a genetically engineered, autochthonous mouse model of sarcomagenesis to investigate the process of cancer immunoediting. This system allows us to monitor the onset and growth of immunogenic and non-immunogenic tumours induced in situ that harbour identical genetic and histopathological characteristics. By comparing the development of such tumours in immune-competent mice with their development in mice with broad immunodeficiency or specific antigenic tolerance, we show that recognition of tumour-specific antigens by lymphocytes is critical for immunoediting against sarcomas. Furthermore, primary sarcomas were edited to become less immunogenic through the selective outgrowth of cells that were able to escape T lymphocyte attack. Loss of tumour antigen expression or presentation on major histocompatibility complex I was necessary and sufficient for this immunoediting process to occur. These results highlight the importance of tumour-specific-antigen expression in immune surveillance, and potentially, immunotherapy.

SUBMITTER: DuPage M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3288744 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Expression of tumour-specific antigens underlies cancer immunoediting.

DuPage Michel M Mazumdar Claire C Schmidt Leah M LM Cheung Ann F AF Jacks Tyler T

Nature 20120208 7385

Cancer immunoediting is a process by which immune cells, particularly lymphocytes of the adaptive immune system, protect the host from the development of cancer and alter tumour progression by driving the outgrowth of tumour cells with decreased sensitivity to immune attack. Carcinogen-induced mouse models of cancer have shown that primary tumour susceptibility is thereby enhanced in immune-compromised mice, whereas the capacity for such tumours to grow after transplantation into wild-type mice ...[more]

PMID: 22318517

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Project description:The immune system influences the fate of developing cancers by not only functioning as a tumour promoter that facilitates cellular transformation, promotes tumour growth and sculpts tumour cell immunogenicity, but also as an extrinsic tumour suppressor that either destroys developing tumours or restrains their expansion. Yet, clinically apparent cancers still arise in immunocompetent individuals in part as a consequence of cancer-induced immunosuppression. In many individuals, immunosuppression is mediated by cytotoxic T-lymphocyte associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death-1 (PD-1), two immunomodulatory receptors expressed on T cells. Monoclonal-antibody-based therapies targeting CTLA-4 and/or PD-1 (checkpoint blockade) have yielded significant clinical benefits-including durable responses--to patients with different malignancies. However, little is known about the identity of the tumour antigens that function as the targets of T cells activated by checkpoint blockade immunotherapy and whether these antigens can be used to generate vaccines that are highly tumour-specific. Here we use genomics and bioinformatics approaches to identify tumour-specific mutant proteins as a major class of T-cell rejection antigens following anti-PD-1 and/or anti-CTLA-4 therapy of mice bearing progressively growing sarcomas, and we show that therapeutic synthetic long-peptide vaccines incorporating these mutant epitopes induce tumour rejection comparably to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. Although mutant tumour-antigen-specific T cells are present in progressively growing tumours, they are reactivated following treatment with anti-PD-1 and/or anti-CTLA-4 and display some overlapping but mostly treatment-specific transcriptional profiles, rendering them capable of mediating tumour rejection. These results reveal that tumour-specific mutant antigens are not only important targets of checkpoint blockade therapy, but they can also be used to develop personalized cancer-specific vaccines and to probe the mechanistic underpinnings of different checkpoint blockade treatments.

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Expression of tumour-specific antigens underlies cancer immunoediting.

Publications

Expression of tumour-specific antigens underlies cancer immunoediting.

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