Abstract 4903: Multimodal therapy with a potent vaccine, metronomic cyclophosphamide and anti-PD-1 enhances immunotherapy of advanced tumors by increasing activation and clonal expansion of tumor infiltrating T cells
Authors: Weir Genevieve , Hrytsenko Olga , Quinton Tara , Karkada Mohan , Berinstein Neil L. , Stanford Marianne , Mansour Marc 
Published: July 2016

Future cancer immunotherapies will combine multiple treatments to improve immune responses to cancer through synergistic, multi-modal mechanisms. In Phase 1 and 1b clinical trials, we found that metronomic cyclophosphamide (mCPA; 50 mg BID) enhanced the immunogenicity of a DepoVaxTM (DPX) based cancer vaccine (DPX-Survivac) in ovarian cancer patients. We reproduced these results in preclinical transplantable tumor models which allowed us to study the underlying mechanisms of cyclophosphamide induced immune modulation, as well as explore additional combinations to enhance the therapeutic effect. Using a HPV-expressing murine tumor model (C3), we found that treatment with mCPA (20 mg/kg/day PO) in combination with a DPX peptide vaccine caused selective enrichment of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, resulting in increased immune responses detected by IFN-ã ELISPOT and in vivo cytotoxicity assay. The combination provided long term-control of tumors when initiated within one week of tumor implantation, however efficacy was limited in mice bearing advanced tumors. Antigen-specific CD8+ T cells could be detected infiltrating advanced tumors by flow cytometry, along with increased expression of PD-1 on the T cells and PD-L1 on the tumor cells, suggesting that the tumor microenvironment (TME) was mediating immune suppression through increased PD-1:PD-L1 signaling. Treatment of tumor bearing mice with vaccine, mCPA and PD-1 blockade (with anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1) resulted in tumor control of established tumors which were not successfully treated with antibody monotherapy. Analysis of tumor infiltrating leukocytes by flow cytometry demonstrated that anti-PD-1 treatment did not further enhance tumor infiltration with antigen-specific CD8+ T cells induced by the vaccine/ mCPA treatment. However, RT-qPCR analysis of the tumor detected an increase in expression of cytotoxic T cell gene signatures within the tumor in combination with anti-PD-1 treatment. Clonal analysis was performed of the total TCRâ sequences using gDNA extracted from the tumors. Vaccine and mCPA treatment resulted in selective expansion of clones, as the top 10 clones accounted for 35% of the total TCRâ sequences; tri-therapy including anti-PD-1 significantly enhanced the expansion of T cells within the TME so that the top 10 clones accounted for 46% of the total TCRâ sequences (p&lt;0.05). We conclude that anti-PD-1 therapy can enhance the efficacy of vaccine immunotherapy by promoting the activity and expansion of antigen-specific T cells within the TME. These results provide a rationale for clinical testing of checkpoint blockade therapy in combination with our highly immunogenic combination of mCPA and DPX-Survivac. Assessment of T cell clonality within the tumor may be an important biomarker for immunomodulatory treatments.

Citation Format: Genevieve Weir, Olga Hrytsenko, Tara Quinton, Mohan Karkada, Neil L. Berinstein, Marianne Stanford, Marc Mansour. Multimodal therapy with a potent vaccine, metronomic cyclophosphamide and anti-PD-1 enhances immunotherapy of advanced tumors by increasing activation and clonal expansion of tumor infiltrating T cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 4903.