Abstract PR-003: Tumor-cell-intrinsic epigenetic factors underlie the heterogeneity of immune infiltration and response to immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Abstract Resistance to immunotherapy is a major problem of current clinical care for cancer patients. While T cell abundance is essential for tumor responsiveness to immunotherapy, factors that dictate T cell infiltration in tumor microenvironments are not fully understood. To understand the tumor-cell-intrinsic factors underlying the heterogeneity of tumor immunity and sensitivity to immunotherapy, we established a new experimental system by generating a library of congenic pancreatic tumor cell clones from a genetic mouse model driven by mutant Kras and p53. These tumor cell clones robustly formed implanted tumors that recapitulated T-cell-inflamed and non-T-cell-inflamed tumor microenvironments, associated with distinct patterns of infiltration by T cells and myeloid cells. We found that the non-T-cell-inflamed phenotype was dominant over the T-cell-inflamed phenotype in the local tumor microenvironment. An integrated transcriptomic and epigenetic analysis revealed that tumor-cell-intrinsic expression of CXCL1, EPHA2 and PTGS2 as determinants of the non-T-cell-inflamed microenvironment, and ablation of tumor-cell-intrinsic CXCL1, EPHA2 or PTGS2 promoted T cell infiltration and sensitivity to a combination of chemotherapies, CD40 agonist, and checkpoint blockades. Similarly, we identified tumor cell-intrinsic epigenetic factor, USP22, as a key regulator of immune infiltration and immunotherapy response in pancreatic cancer. Ablation of tumor-cell-intrinsic USP22 enhanced T cell infiltration and suppressed myeloid cell infiltration in implanted pancreatic tumors as well as increased sensitivities of tumors to the combined immunotherapy. These results demonstrated that heterogeneity of tumor immune phenotypes is driven by tumor-cell-intrinsic factors, including epigenetic factors, that can be manipulated to influence the outcome of immunotherapies. Citation Format: Jinyang Li, Salina Yuan, Robert J. Norgard, Fangxue Yan, Robert H. Vonderheide, Andres Blanco, Ben Z. Stanger. Tumor-cell-intrinsic epigenetic factors underlie the heterogeneity of immune infiltration and response to immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer; 2020 Sep 29-30. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(22 Suppl):Abstract nr PR-003.