Back

NKG2A and HLA-E define a novel alternative immune checkpoint axis in bladder cancer

Salome, B.; Sfakianos, J. P.; Daza, J.; Charap, A.; Hammer, C.; Banchereau, R.; Farkas, A. M.; Geanon, D.; Kelly, G.; de Real, R. M.; Lee, B.; Beaumont, K. G.; Shroff, S.; Wang, Y. S. A.; Wang, Y.-C.; Thin, T. H.; Garcia-Barros, M.; Hegewisch-Solloa, E.; Mace, E. M.; Wang, L.; O'Donnell, T.; Chowell, D.; Fernandez-Rodriguez, R.; Skobe, M.; Taylor, N.; Kim-Schulze, S.; Sebra, R. P.; Palmer, D.; Clancy-Thompson, E.; Hammond, S.; Kamphorst, A. O.; Malmberg, K.-J.; Marcenaro, E.; Romero, P.; Brody, R.; Viard, M.; Yuki, Y.; Martin, M.; Carrington, M.; Mehrazin, R.; Wiklund, P.; Mellman, I.; Mariath

2022-03-05 immunology
10.1101/2022.03.04.482960 bioRxiv
Show abstract

PD-1/PD-L1-blockade immunotherapies have limited efficacy in the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) and metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Here, we show that KLRC1 (NKG2A) expression associates with improved survival and responsiveness to PD-L1 blockade immunotherapy in CD8Ahigh bladder tumors. The loss of antigen presentation is a common mechanism for tumor escape in bladder cancer. NKG2A+ CD8 T cells are able to circumvent HLA-ABC loss through TCR-independent cytotoxicity, which is partly mediated by DNAM-1. In bladder tumors, NKG2A is acquired on a subset of PD-1+ CD8 T cells, alongside stronger tissue-residency memory features, TCR-independent cytotoxicity and evidence of recent proliferation. HLA-E is low but variably expressed on bladder tumors. When expressed, NKG2A+ CD8 T cell anti-tumor responses to HLA-ABC-deficient tumors are inhibited and partly restored upon NKG2A blockade. Overall, our study identifies an alternative path for CD8 T cell exhaustion, that is mediated by NKG2A upregulation and TCR-independent cytotoxicity.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.