Potential new target for immunotherapy
Scientists have found a way to target elusive cells that suppress immune response, depleting them with peptides that spare other important cells and shrink tumors in preclinical experiments, according to a new study.
"We've known about these cells blocking immune response for a decade, but haven't been able to shut them down for lack of an identified target," said the paper's senior author, Larry Kwak, MD, PhD, chair of Lymphoma/Myeloma and director of the Center for Cancer Immunology Research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The paper was published in Nature Medicine (2014; doi:10.1038/nm.3560).
The cells, called myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), are found abundantly in the microenvironment around tumors. Created with other blood cells in the bone marrow, they interfere with activation and proliferation of T cells, the immune system's attack cells. MDSCs have been shown in mouse models to accelerate cancer progression and metastasis.
"This is the first demonstration of a molecule on these cells that allows us to make an antibody, in this case a peptide, to bind to them and get rid of them," Kwak said. "It's a brand new immunotherapy target."
Kwak has developed anticancer therapeutic vaccines to spark an immune system attack against tumors, but their effectiveness has been hindered by factors such as MDSCs that stifle immune response. "The key to taking cancer vaccines to another level is combining them with immunotherapies that target the tumor microenvironment," Kwak said.
Peptide antibodies developed by Kwak and co-discoverer, Hong Qin, PhD, assistant professor of Lymphoma/Myeloma, wipe out MDSCs in the blood, spleen, and tumor cells of mice without binding to other white blood cells or dendritic cells involved in immune response.
"That's really exciting because it's so specific for MDSCs that we would expect few, if any, side effects," Kwak said. The team is working to develop the same target for use in humans.
With no candidate targets, the team took an objective approach by applying a peptide phage library to MDSCs, which permitted mass screening for candidate peptides (short sequences of amino acids) that bind to the surface of the MDSCs.
Peptide phage gathered from the MDSCs were expanded, enriched, and then sequenced to identify predominant peptides. The team found two, labeled G3 and H6, that bound only to MDSCs; other candidates were eliminated because they also tied in to other types of cell.
They fused the two peptides to a portion of mouse immune globulin to generate experimental peptibodies. Both peptibodies bound to both types of MDSC—monocytic white blood cells, which engulf large foreign bodies or cell debris, and granulocytic white cells loaded with tiny granules.
The researchers treated mice with two types of thymus tumor with each peptibody, a control peptibody, and an antibody against Gr-1. The G3 and H6 peptibodies depleted both types of MDSC in the blood and spleens of mice in both tumor models, while the Gr-1 antibody only worked against granulocytic MDSC.
Kwak and colleagues are working to extend their findings to human MDSCs.