Project description:By their selective infection or replication into tumors, oncolytic viruses trigger profound modifications of tumor immune microenvironment with a massive infiltration and activation of T cells. This tumor warming up can be further amplified by the local delivery of powerful immunomodulatory molecules encoded into virus’ genome. Those properties are particularly of interest for tumor poorly infiltrated or infiltrated with anergic T cells to reverse patient’s unresponsiveness to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). TG6050 is a new oncolytic vaccinia virus encoding single-chain human Interleukin-12 (hIL-12) and full length anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (@CTLA-4) monoclonal antibody. Replication, oncolysis, selectivity, transgenes expression and functionality of TG6050 were characterized in vitro. Virus and IL-12 pharmacokinetics, antitumoral activities (alone or combined with ICI), and mechanism of action (MOA) were investigated in “hot” (highly infiltrated) and “cold” (poorly infiltrated) syngeneic murine tumor models. MOA was deciphered by monitoring both systemic and tumor immune responses, and tumor transcriptome analyses. Finally, TG6050 safety after repeated intravenous administrations was evaluated in cynomolgus monkeys and special attention was paid to the level of circulating IL-12 potentially associated with toxic effects. In vitro or in vivo replication of TG6050 in tumor cells allows local expression of functional IL-12 and @CTLA-4. The expression of transgenes, together with the virus replication, translated into an antitumoral activity in both “cold and “hot” tumor murine models that was further amplified by combination with ICI. Analysis of tumor microenvironment (TME) after TG6050 treatment showed an increase of interferon gamma, CD8+ T cells, M1/M2 macrophages ratio and a drastic decrease of regulatory T cells. Those local modifications were observed together with an enhanced systemic and specific antitumor adaptive immune response. In toxicology studies, the virus did not produce any observable adverse effects in cynomolgus monkeys. Conclusions: TG6050 allows the delivery of functional IL-12 and @CTLA-4 into tumor resulting in an excellent antitumor activity along with a shift towards an inflamed TME, and a boost of the systemic antitumor T-cells. Toxicological studies in macaques demonstrated the safety of TG6050. Together these results paved the way for clinical evaluation of TG6050 in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NCT05788926).

Project description:Novel immunotherapy combination therapies have improved outcomes for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but responses are limited to a subset of patients. Little is known about the inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity in cellular signaling networks within the HCC tumor microenvironment (TME) that underlie responses to modern systemic therapy. We applied spatial transcriptomics (ST) profiling to characterize the tumor microenvironment in HCC resection specimens from a prospective clinical trial of neoadjuvant cabozantinib, a multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitor that primarily blocks VEGF, and nivolumab, a PD-1 inhibitor in which 5 out of 15 patients were found to have a pathologic response at the time of resection. ST profiling demonstrated that the TME of responding tumors was enriched for immune cells and cancer associated fibroblasts (CAF) with pro-inflammatory signaling relative to the non-responders. The enriched cancer-immune interactions in responding tumors are characterized by activation of the PAX5 module, a known regulator of B cell maturation, which colocalized with spots with increased B cell markers expression suggesting strong activity of these cells. HCC-CAF interactions were also enriched in the responding tumors and were associated with extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling as there was high activation of FOS and JUN in CAFs adjacent to tumor. The ECM remodeling is consistent with proliferative fibrosis in association with immune-mediated tumor regression. Among the patients with major pathologic response, a single patient experienced early HCC recurrence. ST analysis of this clinical outlier demonstrated marked tumor heterogeneity, with a distinctive immune-poor tumor region that resembles the non-responding TME across patients and was characterized by HCC-CAF interactions and expression of cancer stem cell markers, potentially mediating early tumor immune escape and recurrence in this patient. These data show that responses to modern systemic therapy in HCC are associated with distinctive molecular and cellular landscapes and provide new targets to enhance and prolong responses to systemic therapy in HCC.

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Immunosuppressive inflammation driven by LPS/TLR4 signalling in hepatocellular carcinoma with low immune cell infiltration

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