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An anti-PD-1-GITR-L bispecific agonist induces GITR clustering-mediated T cell activation for cancer immunotherapy.

ABSTRACT: Costimulatory receptors such as glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor-related protein (GITR) play key roles in regulating the effector functions of T cells. In human clinical trials, however, GITR agonist antibodies have shown limited therapeutic effect, which may be due to suboptimal receptor clustering-mediated signaling. To overcome this potential limitation, a rational protein engineering approach is needed to optimize GITR agonist-based immunotherapies. Here we show a bispecific molecule consisting of an anti-PD-1 antibody fused with a multimeric GITR ligand (GITR-L) that induces PD-1-dependent and FcγR-independent GITR clustering, resulting in enhanced activation, proliferation and memory differentiation of primed antigen-specific GITR⁺PD-1⁺ T cells. The anti-PD-1-GITR-L bispecific is a PD-1-directed GITR-L construct that demonstrated dose-dependent, immunologically driven tumor growth inhibition in syngeneic, genetically engineered and xenograft humanized mouse tumor models, with a dose-dependent correlation between target saturation and Ki67 and TIGIT upregulation on memory T cells. Anti-PD-1-GITR-L thus represents a bispecific approach to directing GITR agonism for cancer immunotherapy.

SUBMITTER: Chan S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8960412 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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An anti-PD-1-GITR-L bispecific agonist induces GITR clustering-mediated T cell activation for cancer immunotherapy.

Chan Sarah S Belmar Nicole N Ho Sun S Rogers Bryan B Stickler Marcia M Graham Michelle M Lee Eileen E Tran Ninian N Zhang Dong D Gupta Priyanka P Sho Mien M MacDonough Tracy T Woolley Andrew A Kim Han H Zhang Hong H Liu Wei W Zheng Pingping P Dezso Zoltan Z Halliwill Kyle K Ceccarelli Michele M Rhodes Susan S Thakur Archana A Forsyth Charles M CM Xiong Mengli M Tan Siu Sze SS Iyer Ramesh R Lake Marc M Digiammarino Enrico E Zhou Li L Bigelow Lance L Longenecker Kenton K Judge Russell A RA Liu Cassie C Trumble Max M Remis Jonathan P JP Fox Melvin M Cairns Belinda B Akamatsu Yoshiko Y Hollenbaugh Diane D Harding Fiona F Alvarez Hamsell M HM

Nature cancer 20220307 3

Costimulatory receptors such as glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor-related protein (GITR) play key roles in regulating the effector functions of T cells. In human clinical trials, however, GITR agonist antibodies have shown limited therapeutic effect, which may be due to suboptimal receptor clustering-mediated signaling. To overcome this potential limitation, a rational protein engineering approach is needed to optimize GITR agonist-based immunotherapies. Here we show a bispec ...[more]

PMID: 35256819

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Project description:We previously demonstrated that in addition to generating an antigen-specific immune response, Listeria monocytogenes (Lm)-based immunotherapy significantly reduces the ratio of regulatory T cells (Tregs)/CD4+ and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in the tumor microenvironment. Since Lm-based immunotherapy is able to inhibit the immune suppressive environment, we hypothesized that combining this treatment with agonist antibody to a co-stimulatory receptor that would further boost the effector arm of immunity will result in significant improvement of anti-tumor efficacy of treatment.Here we tested the immune and therapeutic efficacy of Listeria-based immunotherapy combination with agonist antibody to glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor-related protein (GITR) in TC-1 mouse tumor model. We evaluated the potency of combination on tumor growth and survival of treated animals and profiled tumor microenvironment for effector and suppressor cell populations.We demonstrate that combination of Listeria-based immunotherapy with agonist antibody to GITR synergizes to improve immune and therapeutic efficacy of treatment in a mouse tumor model. We show that this combinational treatment leads to significant inhibition of tumor-growth, prolongs survival and leads to complete regression of established tumors in 60% of treated animals. We determined that this therapeutic benefit of combinational treatment is due to a significant increase in tumor infiltrating effector CD4+ and CD8+ T cells along with a decrease of inhibitory cells.To our knowledge, this is the first study that exploits Lm-based immunotherapy combined with agonist anti-GITR antibody as a potent treatment strategy that simultaneously targets both the effector and suppressor arms of the immune system, leading to significantly improved anti-tumor efficacy. We believe that our findings depicted in this manuscript provide a promising and translatable strategy that can enhance the overall efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.

Project description:In vivo GITR ligation has previously been shown to augment T-cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity, yet the underlying mechanisms of this activity, particularly its in vivo effects on CD4+ foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs), have not been fully elucidated. In order to translate this immunotherapeutic approach to the clinic it is important gain better understanding of its mechanism(s) of action. Utilizing the agonist anti-GITR monoclonal antibody DTA-1, we found that in vivo GITR ligation modulates regulatory T cells (Tregs) directly during induction of melanoma tumor immunity. As a monotherapy, DTA-1 induced regression of small established B16 melanoma tumors. Although DTA-1 did not alter systemic Treg frequencies nor abrogate the intrinsic suppressive activity of Tregs within the tumor-draining lymph node, intra-tumor Treg accumulation was significantly impaired. This resulted in a greater Teff:Treg ratio and enhanced tumor-specific CD8+ T-cell activity. The decreased intra-tumor Treg accumulation was due both to impaired infiltration, coupled with DTA-1-induced loss of foxp3 expression in intra-tumor Tregs. Histological analysis of B16 tumors grown in Foxp3-GFP mice showed that the majority of GFP+ cells had lost Foxp3 expression. These "unstable" Tregs were absent in IgG-treated tumors and in DTA-1 treated TDLN, demonstrating a tumor-specific effect. Impairment of Treg infiltration was lost if Tregs were GITR(-/-), and the protective effects of DTA-1 were reduced in reconstituted RAG1(-/-) mice if either the Treg or Teff subset were GITR-negative and absent if both were negative. Our results demonstrate that DTA-1 modulates both Teffs and Tregs during effective tumor treatment. The data suggest that DTA-1 prevents intra-tumor Treg accumulation by altering their stability, and as a result of the loss of foxp3 expression, may modify their intra-tumor suppressive capacity. These findings provide further support for the continued development of agonist anti-GITR mAbs as an immunotherapeutic strategy for cancer.

Dataset Information

An anti-PD-1-GITR-L bispecific agonist induces GITR clustering-mediated T cell activation for cancer immunotherapy.

Publications

An anti-PD-1-GITR-L bispecific agonist induces GITR clustering-mediated T cell activation for cancer immunotherapy.

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