Cutting Edge: Delay and Reversal of T Cell Tolerance by Intratumoral Injection of Antigen-Loaded Dendritic Cells in an Autochthonous Tumor Model

The tumor environment exerts a powerful suppressive influence on infiltrating tumor-reactive T cells. It induces tolerance of adoptively transferred effector T cells as they enter tumors and maintains the tolerance of persisting tumor-infiltrating T cells. In an autochthonous prostate cancer model, in which tumor-reactive CD8 T cells are trackable, we demonstrate that both depletion of endogenous dendritic cells (DCs) and intratumoral injection of Ag-loaded mature DCs delayed the tolerization of tumor-infiltrating effector CD8 T cells. Intratumoral injection of Ag-loaded DCs also reactivated tolerized CD8 T cells in the tumor tissue. The observed effects lasted as long as the injected DCs persisted. These findings are consistent with a critical role of DCs in modulating T cell reactivity in the tumor environment. They also suggest new potential strategies to extend the functionality of transferred effector T cells and to restore function to tolerized tumor-infiltrating T cells for cancer immunotherapy.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Graduate Research Fellowship)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant CA100875)United States. Dept. of Defense (National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship)David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT (Research Fund

Antigen specificity can be irrelevant to immunocytokine efficacy and biodistribution

Cytokine therapy can activate potent, sustained antitumor responses, but collateral toxicity often limits dosages. Although antibody–cytokine fusions (immunocytokines) have been designed with the intent to localize cytokine activity, systemic dose-limiting side effects are not fully ameliorated by attempted tumor targeting. Using the s.c. B16F10 melanoma model, we found that a nontoxic dose of IL-2 immunocytokine synergized with tumor-specific antibody to significantly enhance therapeutic outcomes compared with immunocytokine monotherapy, concomitant with increased tumor saturation and intratumoral cytokine responses. Examination of cell subset biodistribution showed that the immunocytokine associated mainly with IL-2R–expressing innate immune cells, with more bound immunocytokine present in systemic organs than the tumor microenvironment. More surprisingly, immunocytokine antigen specificity and Fcγ receptor interactions did not seem necessary for therapeutic efficacy or biodistribution patterns because immunocytokines with irrelevant specificity and/or inactive mutant Fc domains behaved similarly to tumor-specific immunocytokine. IL-2–IL-2R interactions, rather than antibody–antigen targeting, dictated immunocytokine localization; however, the lack of tumor targeting did not preclude successful antibody combination therapy. Mathematical modeling revealed immunocytokine size as another driver of antigen targeting efficiency. This work presents a safe, straightforward strategy for augmenting immunocytokine efficacy by supplementary antibody dosing and explores underappreciated factors that can subvert efforts to purposefully alter cytokine biodistribution.National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Grant CA174795)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowshi

Localized Immunotherapy via Liposome-Anchored Anti-CD137 + IL-2 Prevents Lethal Toxicity and Elicits Local and Systemic Antitumor Immunity

Immunostimulatory agonists such as anti-CD137 and interleukin (IL)-2 have elicited potent antitumor immune responses in preclinical studies, but their clinical use is limited by inflammatory toxicities that result upon systemic administration. We hypothesized that by rigorously restricting the biodistribution of immunotherapeutic agents to a locally accessible lesion and draining lymph node(s), effective local and systemic antitumor immunity could be achieved in the absence of systemic toxicity. We anchored anti-CD137 and an engineered IL-2Fc fusion protein to the surfaces of PEGylated liposomes, whose physical size permitted dissemination in the tumor parenchyma and tumor-draining lymph nodes but blocked entry into the systemic circulation following intratumoral injection. In the B16F10 melanoma model, intratumoral liposome-coupled anti-CD137 + IL-2Fc therapy cured a majority of established primary tumors while avoiding the lethal inflammatory toxicities caused by equivalent intratumoral doses of soluble immunotherapy. Immunoliposome therapy induced protective antitumor memory and elicited systemic antitumor immunity that significantly inhibited the growth of simultaneously established distal tumors. Tumor inhibition was CD8[superscript +] T-cell–dependent and was associated with increased CD8[superscript +] T-cell infiltration in both treated and distal tumors, enhanced activation of tumor antigen–specific T cells in draining lymph nodes, and a reduction in regulatory T cells in treated tumors. These data suggest that local nanoparticle-anchored delivery of immuno-agonists represents a promising strategy to improve the therapeutic window and clinical applicability of highly potent but otherwise intolerable regimens of cancer immunotherapy.Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center-MIT Bridge Project Fun

Engineered gp120 immunogens that elicit VRC01-like antibodies by vaccination

Background: One of the great challenges for an HIV vaccine is to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies specific for conserved epitopes from which the virus cannot easily escape. The CD4 binding site is one such epitope against which several antibodies (e.g. b12, VRC01) have been isolated. In macaques infected with SHIV, passive immunization with these CD4-directed neutralizing antibodies fails to control the virus, but prophylactic administration is highly protective. Similarly, patients who generate neutralizing antibodies over the course of an HIV infection derive no clinical benefit from them, but eliciting such antibodies prophylactically by vaccination may prevent the virus from establishing its lethal foothold

Effect of Small-Molecule-Binding Affinity on Tumor Uptake In Vivo: A Systematic Study Using a Pretargeted Bispecific Antibody

Small-molecule ligands specific for tumor-associated surface receptors have wide applications in cancer diagnosis and therapy. Achieving high-affinity binding to the desired target is important for improving detection limits and for increasing therapeutic efficacy. However, the affinity required for maximal binding and retention remains unknown. Here, we present a systematic study of the effect of small-molecule affinity on tumor uptake in vivo with affinities spanning a range of three orders of magnitude. A pretargeted bispecific antibody with different binding affinities to different DOTA (1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid)-based small molecules is used as a receptor proxy. In this particular system targeting carcinoembryonic antigen, a small-molecule–binding affinity of 400 pmol/L was sufficient to achieve maximal tumor targeting, and an improvement in affinity to 10 pmol/L showed no significant improvement in tumor uptake at 24 hours postinjection. We derive a simple mathematical model of tumor targeting using measurable parameters that correlates well with experimental observations. We use relations derived from the model to develop design criteria for the future development of small-molecule agents for targeted cancer therapeutics.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship ProgramNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01-CA-101830

Differential Requirement for CD70 and CD80/CD86 in Dendritic Cellmediated Activation of Tumor Tolerized CD8 T Cells

A major obstacle to efficacious T cell-based cancer immunotherapy is the tolerizing-tumor microenvironment that rapidly inactivates tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. In an autochthonous model of prostate cancer, we have previously shown that intratumoral injection of Ag-loaded dendritic cells (DCs) delays T cell tolerance induction as well as refunctionalizes already tolerized T cells in the tumor tissue. In this study, we have defined molecular interactions that mediate the effects of DCs. We show that pretreating Ag-loaded DCs with anti-CD70 Ab abolishes the ability of DCs to delay tumor-mediated T cell tolerance induction, whereas interfering with 4-1BBL, CD80, CD86, or both CD80 and CD86 had no significant effect. In contrast, CD80[superscript −/−] or CD80[superscript −/−]CD86[superscript −/−] DCs failed to reactivate already tolerized T cells in the tumor tissue, whereas interfering with CD70 and 4-1BBL had no effect. Furthermore, despite a high level of programmed death 1 expression by tumor-infiltrating T cells and programmed death ligand 1 expression in the prostate, disrupting programmed death 1/programmed death ligand 1 interaction did not enhance T cell function in this model. These findings reveal dynamic requirements for costimulatory signals to overcome tumor-induced tolerance and have significant implications for developing more effective cancer immunotherapies.American Cancer Society (Postdoctoral Fellowship 12109-PF-11-025-01-LIB)John D. Proctor Foundation (Margaret A. Cunningham Immune Mechanisms in Cancer Research Fellowship)United States. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Prostate Cancer Research Program (Grant

Triepitopic Antibody Fusions Inhibit Cetuximab-Resistant BRAF and KRAS Mutant Tumors via EGFR Signal Repression

Dysregulation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a hallmark of many epithelial cancers, rendering this receptor an attractive target for cancer therapy. Much effort has been focused on the development of EGFR-directed antibody-based therapeutics, culminating in the clinical approval of the drugs cetuximab and panitumumab. Unfortunately, the clinical efficacy of these drugs has been disappointingly low, and a particular challenge to targeting EGFR with antibody therapeutics has been resistance, resulting from mutations in the downstream raf and ras effector proteins. Recent work demonstrating antibody cocktail-induced synergistic downregulation of EGFR motivated our design of cetuximab-based antibody–fibronectin domain fusion proteins that exploit downregulation-based EGFR inhibition by simultaneously targeting multiple receptor epitopes. We establish that, among our engineered multiepitopic formats, trans-triepitopic antibody fusions demonstrate optimal efficacy, inducing rapid EGFR clustering and internalization and consequently ablating downstream signaling. The combined effects of EGFR downregulation, ligand competition, and immune effector function conspire to inhibit tumor growth in xenograft models of cetuximab-resistant BRAF and KRAS mutant cancers. Our designed triepitopic constructs have the potential to enhance the efficacy and expand the scope of EGFR-directed therapies, and our multiepitopic may be readily applied to other receptor targets to formulate a new class of antibody-based therapeutics.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant CA96504)American Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowshi

A Raf-competitive K-Ras binder can fail to functionally antagonize signaling

Mutated in approximately 30% of human cancers, Ras GTPases are the most common drivers of oncogenesis and render tumors unresponsive to many standard therapies. Despite decades of research, no drugs directly targeting Ras are currently available. We have previously characterized a small protein antagonist of K-Ras, R11.1.6, and demonstrated its direct competition with Raf for Ras binding. Here we evaluate the effects of R11.1.6 on Ras signaling and cellular proliferation in a panel of human cancer cell lines. Through lentiviral transduction, we generated cell lines that constitutively or through induction with doxycycline express R11.1.6 or a control protein YW1 and show specific binding by R11.1.6 to endogenous Ras through microscopy and co-immunoprecipitation experiments. Genetically-encoded intracellular expression of this high-affinity Ras antagonist, however, fails to measurably disrupt signaling through either the MAPK or PI3K pathway. Consistently, cellular proliferation was unaffected as well. To understand this lack of signaling inhibition, we quantified the number of molecules of R11.1.6 expressed by the inducible cell lines and developed a simple mathematical model describing the competitive binding of Ras by R11.1.6 and Raf. This model supports a potential mechanism for the lack of biological effects that we observed, suggesting stoichiometric and thermodynamic barriers that should be overcome in pharmacological efforts to directly compete with downstream effector proteins localized to membranes at very high effective concentrations.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant 5 -R01-CA096504 -15)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Associate Director FundMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Frontier FundDavid H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. (Support core Grant P30- CA14051)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.). Interdepartmental Biotechnology Training Program ([T32 GM008334-25)German Cancer Foundation (Mildred-Scheel fellowship)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ludwig Center for Cancer Researc

Rapid Conformational Epitope Mapping of Anti-gp120 Antibodies with a Designed Mutant Panel Displayed on Yeast

gp120 is a substrate for protein engineering both for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) immunogen design and as a bait for isolating anti-HIV antibodies from patient samples. In this work, we describe the display of a stripped core gp120 on the yeast cell surface. Validation against a panel of neutralizing antibodies confirms that yeast-displayed gp120 presents the CD4 binding site in the correct conformation. We map the epitope of the broadly neutralizing anti-gp120 antibody VRC01 using both a random mutagenesis library and a defined mutant panel and find that the resultant epitope maps are consistent with one another and with the crystallographically identified contact residues. Mapping the VRC01-competitive antibodies b12 and b13 reveals energetic differences in their epitopes that are not obvious from existing crystal structures. These data suggest mutation sets that abrogate binding to broadly neutralizing antibodies with greater specificity than the canonical mutation D368R, useful in rapidly assessing the nature of a vaccine response.Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvar

An engineered protein antagonist of K-Ras/B-Raf interaction

Ras is at the hub of signal transduction pathways controlling cell proliferation and survival. Its mutants, present in about 30% of human cancers, are major drivers of oncogenesis and render tumors unresponsive to standard therapies. Here we report the engineering of a protein scaffold for preferential binding to K-Ras G12D. This is the first reported inhibitor to achieve nanomolar affinity while exhibiting specificity for mutant over wild type (WT) K-Ras. Crystal structures of the protein R11.1.6 in complex with K-Ras WT and K-Ras G12D offer insight into the structural basis for specificity, highlighting differences in the switch I conformation as the major defining element in the higher affinity interaction. R11.1.6 directly blocks interaction with Raf and reduces signaling through the Raf/MEK/ERK pathway. Our results support greater consideration of the state of switch I and provide a novel tool to study Ras biology. Most importantly, this work makes an unprecedented contribution to Ras research in inhibitor development strategy by revealing details of a targetable binding surface. Unlike the polar interfaces found for Ras/effector interactions, the K-Ras/R11.1.6 complex reveals an extensive hydrophobic interface that can serve as a template to advance the development of high affinity, non-covalent inhibitors of K-Ras oncogenic mutants.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 5-R01-CA096504-15