Abstract LB400: Evolution of anti-viral and anti-tumor immunity in tumors in response to oncolytic virus therapy
Authors: Lyudovyk Olga , Burman Bharat , Ceglia Nicholas , Greenbaum Benjamin , Elhanati Yuval , Zamarin Dmitriy 
Published: April 2024

Preclinical and clinical studies have shown that intratumoral oncolytic viruses (OVs) can convert “cold” tumors to “hot” and overcome resistance to immune checkpoint blockade. However, their modest clinical efficacy to date highlights major gaps in our understanding of how OVs interact with the immune system, and very limited information is available regarding the specificity of the T cell repertoires that emerge within tumors in response to OV therapy.

To address these gaps, we interrogated the evolution of immune response to OV therapy in mice using oncolytic Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV). Leveraging a bilateral flank melanoma mouse model, we identified and phenotypically characterized anti-viral and anti-tumor T cells in local and abscopal tumors with single cell (sc) RNA and T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing. Intratumoral NDV therapy to a single flank tumor resulted in increased infiltration of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in both the injected and distant tumors, higher TCR overlap between treated and distant tumors, and higher frequency of convergent TCR clonotypes, suggesting their non-random expansion, albeit without specificity information.

To identify the specificity of the emergent TCR clones in an unbiased fashion, we developed an approach based on adoptive transfer of T cells from tumor-bearing control or NDV-treated donor mice into congenically marked recipients with either B16 or NDV antigen stimulation. This allowed the isolation and identification of expanded B16- or virus-specific TCR clones that were then linked to donor tumors to define their relative frequencies, their distribution across the treated and distant tumors, and their associated phenotypic states. We observed significantly greater expansion of B16-reactive T cells adoptively transferred from NDV-treated donors (compared to control donors), suggesting that NDV therapy leads to potentiation of tumor-specific immune response. Intriguingly, virus-specific and tumor-specific T cells appeared to distribute to distinct phenotypic clusters, with virus-specific and tumor-specific T cells found predominantly in the activated-dysfunctional and proliferating clusters, respectively. When looking at the distribution of the TCR clones, virus-specific clones dominated the majority of the response in both treated and distant tumors, despite the lack of virus injection in distant tumors. These results provide insights into understanding the balance between virus- and tumor-directed immune responses elicited by OV therapy and highlight that even in the presence of significant abscopal immune effect, the significant proportion of T cells in “hot” tumors represent anti-viral rather than anti-tumor response. These findings provide tools for tracking of immune response specificity and generate rationale for development of OV engineering strategies and combinations that favor anti-tumor rather than anti-viral immunity.

Citation Format: Olga Lyudovyk, Bharat Burman, Nicholas Ceglia, Benjamin Greenbaum, Yuval Elhanati, Dmitriy Zamarin. Evolution of anti-viral and anti-tumor immunity in tumors in response to oncolytic virus therapy [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 2 (Late-Breaking, Clinical Trial, and Invited Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(7_Suppl):Abstract nr LB400.