Citation Information: JCI Insight. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.124989.
Abstract
The tumor microenvironment presents physical, immunologic, and metabolic barriers to durable immunotherapy responses. We have recently described roles for both T cell metabolic insufficiency as well as tumor hypoxia as inhibitory mechanisms which prevent T cell activity in murine tumors, but whether intratumoral T cell activity or response to immunotherapy vary between patients as a function of distinct metabolic profiles in tumor cells remains unclear. Here we show that metabolic derangement can vary widely in both degree and type in patient-derived cell lines and in ex vivo analysis of patient samples, such that some cells demonstrate solely deregulated oxidative or glycolytic metabolism. Further, deregulated oxidative, but not glycolytic, metabolism was associated with increased generation of hypoxia upon implantation into immunodeficient animals. Generation of murine single cell melanoma cell lines that lacked either oxidative or glycolytic metabolism showed that elevated tumor oxygen consumption was associated with increased T cell exhaustion and decreased immune activity. Further, melanoma lines lacking oxidative metabolism were solely responsive to anti-PD1 therapy among those tested. Prospective analysis of patient samples immunotherapy revealed that oxidative, but not glycolytic, metabolism was associated with progression on PD-1 blockade. Our data highlight a role for oxygen as a crucial metabolite required for the tumor-infiltrating T cells to differentiate appropriately upon PD-1 blockade, and suggesting tumor oxidative metabolism may be a target to improve immunotherapeutic response.
Authors
Yana G. Najjar, Ashley V. Menk, Cindy Sander, Uma Rao, Arivarasan Karunamurthy, Roma Bhatia, Shuyan Zhai, John M. Kirkwood, Greg M. Delgoffe
