Leukemia-induced dysfunctional TIM-3+CD4+ bone marrow T cells increase risk of relapse in pediatric B-precursor ALL patients

Autor: Stefan Canzar, Francisca Rojas Ringeling, Martin A. Horstmann, Christoph Klein, Theresa Kaeuferle, Dana Stenger, Mareike Lepenies, Semjon Willier, Franziska Blaeschke, Gabriele Escherich, Vera Binder, Meino Rohlfs, Tobias Feuchtinger, Martin Zimmermann
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Leukemia. 34:2607-2620
ISSN: 1476-5551
0887-6924
DOI: 10.1038/s41375-020-0793-1
Popis: Interaction of malignancies with tissue-specific immune cells has gained interest for prognosis and intervention of emerging immunotherapies. We analyzed bone marrow T cells (bmT) as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in pediatric precursor-B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Based on data from 100 patients, we show that ALL is associated with late-stage CD4+ phenotype and loss of early CD8+ T cells. The inhibitory exhaustion marker TIM-3 on CD4+ bmT increased relapse risk (RFS = 94.6/70.3%) confirmed by multivariate analysis. The hazard ratio of TIM-3 expression nearly reached the hazard ratio of MRD (7.1 vs. 8.0) indicating that patients with a high frequency of TIM-3+CD4+ bone marrow T cells at initial diagnosis have a 7.1-fold increased risk to develop ALL relapse. Comparison of wild type primary T cells to CRISPR/Cas9-mediated TIM-3 knockout and TIM-3 overexpression confirmed the negative effect of TIM-3 on T cell responses against ALL. TIM-3+CD4+ bmT are increased in ALL overexpressing CD200, that leads to dysfunctional antileukemic T cell responses. In conclusion, TIM-3-mediated interaction between bmT and leukemia cells is shown as a strong risk factor for relapse in pediatric B-lineage ALL. CD200/TIM-3-signaling, rather than PD-1/PD-L1, is uncovered as a mechanism of T cell dysfunction in ALL with major implication for future immunotherapies.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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