An immunosuppressive tumor population drives immunotherapy resistance of heterogeneous tumors

Abstract

Intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) – cellular and molecular diversity within a tumor – is linked to failure of immunotherapy in multiple cancer types. A high degree of ITH is associated with poor infiltration of T cells into the tumor and resistance to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. To determine how distinct tumor populations within heterogeneous tumors shape the immune microenvironment and how this impacts therapy response, we modeled heterogeneous tumors composed of an RFP-tagged immunosuppressive tumor population and a YFP-tagged pro-inflammatory tumor population. The resulting tumors contained a patchwork of distinct regions with YFP +cells, RFP +cells, or a mixture of YFP +and RFP +cells. Analysis of the immune infiltrates in each region revealed a higher frequency of total CD4 T cells, Th1 cells and IFNg +CD8 T cells in YFP regions compared to RFP regions, whereas macrophages exhibited the opposite pattern. PD-1 blockade and CD40 agonist combinatorial antibody therapy induced an increase in Th1 abundance in RFP regions, but the treatment did not clear the tumors. Together, these results reveal that distinct regional immune infiltration pattens within the tumor are driven by the local tumor cells present in each region, and that the treatment-induced global improvement of Th1 infiltration alone is not sufficient to induce tumor clearance. Moreover, we identified Cx3cl1 as a driver of a dominant immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, marked by an increase in immunosuppressive CD206 +macrophages and decrease in anti-tumoral neutrophils and monocytes. These results suggest that an immunosuppressive tumor population drives immunotherapy resistance of heterogeneous tumors and Cx3cl1 as a new therapeutic target. Supported by grants from Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (Project Grant)