Abstract 3366: Novel oncolytic adenovirus for systemic treatment of disseminated lung cancer
Authors: Yao Jia , Atasheva Svetlana , Shayakhmetov Dmitry 
Published: June 2022

The increased cancer incidence and associated mortality call for the development of novel treatment modalities to address needs of cancer patients, which do not respond to existing therapies. Oncolytic viruses emerge as a new modality in cancer therapy due to their natural ability to infect and kill cancer cells, and to stimulate patient's own immune system to eliminate cancer cells throughout the body. For this study, we used novel engineered oncolytic adenovirus, Ad5/35-3M (AVID-317), which demonstrated greatly-improved safety profile after systemic virus administration due to a set of targeted mutations in the adenovirus capsid (Atasheva et al, Science Translational Medicine, 2020, eabc6659). Systemic administration of AVID-317 to NCr/Nude mice with disseminated lung adenocarcinoma slowed tumor progression and significantly extended survival, compared to buffer-treated control tumor-bearing mice. In AVID-317 treated group, about 25% of mice demonstrated complete rejection of disseminated tumors and the rest of mice showed significantly extended survival. To understand the mechanism of AVID-317-mediated tumor suppression and to design more effective combination therapies, we analyzed disseminated tumors from the lungs in NCr/Nude mice using single cell RNA-seq and Mass Cytometry (Cy-TOF) after virotherapy. Our scRNA-seq analysis showed that in a subset of mice responding poorly to AVID-317 therapy, tumor-associated CSF1R-expressing myeloid cells expressed higher levels of MHC-II, Ctsb, and Arg1. In addition, CD3e+ T cells expressed functional exhaustion marker, PD-1, exclusively in mice that responded poorly to virotherapy. Mass Cytometry analysis with 37 metal isotope-labeled antibodies confirmed elevated expression of activation markers on myeloid cells after virotherapy. Next, we analyzed the efficacy of a combination therapy where in addition to AVID-317 administration, tumor-bearing mice were treated with anti PD-1 antibody to block immune-suppressive signaling in T cells, anti-CSF1R antibody to block CSF1R signaling, and anti-Asialo GM1 antibody to deplete anti-viral NK cells. Our analyses showed that combination therapy regimen significantly improved therapeutic outcomes in mice with disseminated lung cancer, by extending median survival to 95 days from 55-56 days observed in mice treated with either virus alone or combination drugs without the virus. Taken together, our study demonstrated feasibility of using AVID-317 oncolytic adenovirus for systemic therapy of disseminated lung cancer. Our study also showed that a combination of virotherapy with a defined select of immunotherapeutic drugs allows for the significant improvement of therapeutic efficacy in pre-clinical model of disseminated lung cancer.

Citation Format: Jia Yao, Svetlana Atasheva, Dmitry Shayakhmetov. Novel oncolytic adenovirus for systemic treatment of disseminated lung cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 3366.