CELL INTELLIGENCE · 肿瘤细胞治疗研究

Current immunotherapies provide limited benefits against T cell-depleted tumors, calling for therapeutic innovation. Using multi-omics integration of cancer patient data, we predict a type I interferon (IFN) response HIGH state of dendritic cell (DC) vaccines, with efficacious clinical impact. However, preclinical DC vaccines recapitulating this state by combining immunogenic cancer cell death with induction of type I IFN responses fail to regress mouse tumors lacking T cell infiltrates. Here, in lymph nodes (LNs), instead of activating CD4 + /CD8 + T cells, DCs stimulate immunosuppressive programmed death-ligand 1-positive (PD-L1 + ) LN-associated macrophages (LAMs). Moreover, DC vaccines also stimulate PD-L1 + tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). This creates two anatomically distinct niches of PD-L1 + macrophages that suppress CD8 + T cells. Accordingly, a combination of PD-L1 blockade with DC vaccines achieves significant tumor regression by depleting PD-L1 + macrophages, suppressing myeloid inflammation, and de-inhibiting effector/stem-like memory T cells. Importantly, clinical DC vaccines also potentiate T cell-suppressive PD-L1 + TAMs in glioblastoma patients. We propose that a multimodal immunotherapy and vaccination regimen is mandatory to overcome T cell-depleted tumors.