Immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as a potent new class of anticancer therapy

Topics overview: Immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as a potent new class of anticancer therapy, learned carry-over effects generalize over time and across routes of drug administration—independent of conscious expectations, Infection with a mutant parasite with impaired hemoglobin digestion that produces little hemozoin, a major Plasmodium by-product, did not cause bone loss, proteasome variations influence T cell repertoire selection and may contribute to the difference in individual susceptibility to autoimmunity,  pre-DC compartment contains distinct lineage-committed subpopulations.

1. Combined immune checkpoint blockade as a therapeutic strategy for BRCA1-mutated breast cancer.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as a potent new class of anticancer therapy. They have changed the treatment landscape for a range of tumors, particularly those with a high mutational load. To date, however, modest results have been observed in breast cancer, where tumors are rarely hypermutated. Because BRCA1-associated tumors frequently exhibit a triple-negative phenotype with extensive lymphocyte infiltration, Emma Nolan at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Victoria, Australia and her colleagues explored their mutational load, immune profile, and response to checkpoint inhibition in a Brca1-deficient tumor model. BRCA1-mutated triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) exhibited an increased somatic mutational load and greater numbers of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, with increased expression of immunomodulatory genes including PDCD1 (PD-1) and CTLA4, when compared to TNBCs from BRCA1–wild-type patients. Cisplatin treatment combined with dual anti–programmed death-1 and anti–cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated antigen 4 therapy substantially augmented antitumor immunity in Brca1-deficient mice, resulting in an avid systemic and intratumoral immune response. This response involved enhanced dendritic cell activation, reduced suppressive FOXP3+ regulatory T cells, and concomitant increase in the activation of tumor-infiltrating cytotoxic CD8+ and CD4+ T cells, characterized by the induction of polyfunctional cytokine-producing T cells. Dual (but not single) checkpoint blockade together with cisplatin profoundly attenuated the growth of Brca1-deficient tumors in vivo and improved survival. These findings provide a rationale for clinical studies of combined immune checkpoint blockade in BRCA1-associated TNBC.

Read more, please click http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/393/eaal4922

2. The effects of treatment failure generalize across different routes of drug administration.

 Failure of medical treatments can hamper responses to subsequent treatments. It has been suggested that changing the route of drug administration could reduce such negative carry-over effects, but direct evidence for this approach is lacking. Matthias Zunhammer at University Hospital Essen in Essen, Germany and his colleagues therefore investigated in 211 healthy volunteers whether changes in drug administration route reduce such carry-over effects. A positive or negative treatment history with topical analgesic treatments was induced experimentally in a mock clinical trial setting. Subsequently, a different inert drug was introduced via the same (topical) or another (oral) route of administration and its analgesic efficacy was tested. Changing the route of drug administration induced expectations of positive treatment effects in the subjects but did not actually counteract the negative carry-over effects on treatment efficacy. These findings indicate that learned carry-over effects generalize over time and across routes of drug administration—independent of conscious expectations. Other strategies are needed to prevent negative carry-over effects of treatment failure from influencing the results of subsequent treatment attempts.

Read more, please click http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/393/eaal2999

3. Plasmodium products persist in the bone marrow and promote chronic bone loss.

Although malaria is a life-threatening disease with severe complications, most people develop partial immunity and suffer from mild symptoms. However, incomplete recovery from infection causes chronic illness, and little is known of the potential outcomes of this chronicity. Michelle S. J. Lee at Immunology Frontier Research Center (IFReC), Osaka University in Osaka, Japan and his colleagues found that malaria causes bone loss and growth retardation as a result of chronic bone inflammation induced by Plasmodium products. Acute malaria infection severely suppresses bone homeostasis, but sustained accumulation of Plasmodium products in the bone marrow niche induces MyD88-dependent inflammatory responses in osteoclast and osteoblast precursors, leading to increased RANKL expression and overstimulation of osteoclastogenesis, favoring bone resorption. Infection with a mutant parasite with impaired hemoglobin digestion that produces little hemozoin, a major Plasmodium by-product, did not cause bone loss. Supplementation of alfacalcidol, a vitamin D3 analog, could prevent the bone loss. These results highlight the risk of bone loss in malaria-infected patients and the potential benefits of coupling bone therapy with antimalarial treatment.

Read more, please click http://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/eaam8093

4. Human thymoproteasome variations influence CD8 T cell selection.

The proteasome is a multi-subunit protease complex essential for housekeeping protein degradation and the production of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I-bound antigen peptides that are essential for recognition by CD8 T cells. MHC variations dramatically contribute to T cell selection and autoimmunity, but genetic variations of peptide processing machinery including proteasome genes have been poorly explored in this context. In the computational analysis of human proteasome gene variation, Takeshi Nitta at University of Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan and his colleagues documented that PSMB11 was highly enriched for nucleotide changes that interfere with protein function. This gene encodes β5t, a thymus-specific catalytic subunit that regulates positive selection of CD8 T cells by producing a distinct set of MHC class I-bound peptides. The introduction of PSMB11 variations into the mouse genome by genome-editing revealed that these variations impaired the development of CD8 T cells in vivo. One of the PSMB11 polymorphisms altered the CD8 T cell repertoire in mice and was associated with a higher risk of an autoimmune disease in humans. Their findings suggest that, in addition to the MHC haplotype, proteasome variations influence T cell repertoire selection and may contribute to the difference in individual susceptibility to autoimmunity.

Read more, please click http://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/eaan5165

5. Mapping the human DC lineage through the integration of high-dimensional techniques.

Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen-presenting cells that orchestrate immune responses. The human DC population comprises two main functionally specialized lineages, whose origins and differentiation pathways remain incompletely defined. Here, Peter See at Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) in Singapore and his colleagues combine two high-dimensional technologies—single-cell messenger RNA sequencing (scmRNAseq) and cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF)—to identify human blood CD123+CD33+CD45RA+ DC precursors (pre-DC). Pre-DC share surface markers with plasmacytoid DC (pDC) but have distinct functional properties that were previously attributed to pDC. Tracing the differentiation of DC from the bone marrow to the peripheral blood revealed that the pre-DC compartment contains distinct lineage-committed subpopulations, including one early uncommitted CD123 high pre-DC subset and two CD45RA+CD123low lineage-committed subsets exhibiting functional differences. The discovery of multiple committed pre-DC populations opens promising new avenues for the therapeutic exploitation of DC subset-specific targeting.

Read more, please click http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6342/eaag3009