Enhancement of vaccine-mediated antitumor immunity in cancer patients after depletion of regulatory T cells

• Text
• PDF

Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether elimination of CD4+/CD25+ Tregs using the recombinant IL-2 diphtheria toxin conjugate DAB389IL-2 (also known as denileukin diftitox and ONTAK) is capable of enhancing the immunostimulatory efficacy of tumor RNA-transfected DC vaccines. We show that DAB389IL-2 is capable of selectively eliminating CD25-expressing Tregs from the PBMCs of cancer patients without inducing toxicity on other cellular subsets with intermediate or low expression of CD25. DAB389IL-2–mediated Treg depletion resulted in enhanced stimulation of proliferative and cytotoxic T cell responses in vitro but only when DAB389IL-2 was omitted during T cell priming. DAB389IL-2 significantly reduced the number of Tregs present in the peripheral blood of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients and abrogated Treg-mediated immunosuppressive activity in vivo. Moreover, DAB389IL-2–mediated elimination of Tregs followed by vaccination with RNA-transfected DCs significantly improved the stimulation of tumor-specific T cell responses in RCC patients when compared with vaccination alone. Our findings may have implications in the design of immune-based strategies that may incorporate the Treg depletion strategy to achieve potent antitumor immunity with therapeutic impact.

Authors

Jens Dannull, Zhen Su, David Rizzieri, Benjamin K. Yang, Doris Coleman, Donna Yancey, Aijing Zhang, Philipp Dahm, Nelson Chao, Eli Gilboa, Johannes Vieweg