《自然》:神经母细胞瘤有了免疫新疗法
本研究首先通过免疫肽组学方法识别出神经母细胞瘤特异性的肽段。这些肽段在神经母细胞瘤中表达,但在正常组织中未被检测到。其次,开发了新型的肽中心嵌合抗原受体(PC-CAR)T细胞,这些细胞能够有效地识别并消除表达PHOX2B的神经母细胞瘤细胞。此外,研究团队发现这些PC-CAR T细胞不仅能识别通过特定HLA分子呈递的肽段,还能识别通过其他HLA分子呈递的相同肽段,显示出跨HLA的识别能力,增加了治疗的适用性和有效性。最后,通过体外细胞实验,以及体内小鼠模型,证实了该疗法的有效性。
针对PHOX2B的PC-CAR T细胞的开发
综上,这项研究不仅为神经母细胞瘤提供了一种新的治疗方法,也为其他类型的低突变负荷癌症的治疗提供了可能的新方向。它的影响可能会远远超出神经母细胞瘤治疗领域,为更广泛的癌症治疗带来革命性的改变。
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*本文由深圳市拾玉儿童公益基金会“儿童肿瘤前沿”团队编译或约稿,文中图表均源引自文献原文。本文著作权归文章作者所有,欢迎个人转发分享,未经允许禁止转载,作者拥有所有法定权利,违者必究。如需转载,请留言或联系[email protected]。本文旨在分享儿童肿瘤科研前沿成果,不是治疗方案推荐。如需获得疾病治疗方案指导,请前往正规医院就诊。
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原文摘要(Abstract)
The majority of oncogenic drivers are intracellular proteins, constraining their immunotherapeutic targeting to mutated peptides (neoantigens) presented by individual human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allotypes1. However, most cancers have a modest mutational burden that is insufficient for generating responses using neoantigen-based therapies2,3. Neuroblastoma is a paediatric cancer that harbours few mutations and is instead driven by epigenetically deregulated transcriptional networks4. Here we show that the neuroblastoma immunopeptidome is enriched with peptides derived from proteins essential for tumorigenesis. We focused on targeting the unmutated peptide QYNPIRTTF discovered on HLA-A*24:02, which is derived from the neuroblastoma-dependency gene and master transcriptional regulator PHOX2B. To target QYNPIRTTF, we developed peptide-centric chimeric antigen receptors (PC-CARs) through a counter panning strategy using predicted potentially cross-reactive peptides. We further proposed that PC-CARs can recognize peptides on additional HLA allotypes when presenting a similar overall molecular surface. Informed by our computational modelling results, we show that PHOX2B PC-CARs also recognize QYNPIRTTF presented by HLA-A*23:01, the most common non-A2 allele in people with African ancestry. Finally, we demonstrate potent and specific killing of neuroblastoma cells expressing these HLAs in vitro and complete tumour regression in mice. These data suggest that PC-CARs have the potential to expand the pool of immunotherapeutic targets to include non-immunogenic intracellular oncoproteins and allow targeting through additional HLA allotypes in a clinical setting.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06706-0