Article abstract


Nature Medicine 15, 528 - 536 (2009)
Published online: 26 April 2009 | Corrected online: 7 July 2009 | doi:10.1038/nm.1953



There is a Corrigendum (July 2009) associated with this Article.

Adjuvant IL-7 antagonizes multiple cellular and molecular inhibitory networks to enhance immunotherapies

Marc Pellegrini1,2,7, Thomas Calzascia1,2,7, Alisha R Elford1, Arda Shahinian1, Amy E Lin1,2, Dilan Dissanayake1,2, Salim Dhanji1,2, Linh T Nguyen1,2, Matthew A Gronski3, Michel Morre4, Brigitte Assouline4, Katharina Lahl5, Tim Sparwasser5,6, Pamela S Ohashi1,2,7 & Tak W Mak1,2,7


Identifying key factors that enhance immune responses is crucial for manipulating immunity to tumors. We show that after a vaccine-induced immune response, adjuvant interleukin-7 (IL-7) improves antitumor responses and survival in an animal model. The improved immune response is associated with increased IL-6 production and augmented T helper type 17 cell differentiation. Furthermore, IL-7 modulates the expression of two ubiquitin ligases: Casitas B-lineage lymphoma b (Cbl-b), a negative regulator of T cell activation, is repressed, and SMAD-specific E3 ubiquitin protein ligase-2 (Smurf2) is enhanced, which antagonizes transforming growth factor-beta signaling. Notably, we show that although short term IL-7 therapy potently enhances vaccine-mediated immunity, in the absence of vaccination it is inefficient in promoting antitumor immune responses, despite inducing homeostatic proliferation of T cells. The ability of adjuvant IL-7 to antagonize inhibitory networks at the cellular and molecular level has major implications for immunotherapy in the treatment of tumors.

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  1. The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  2. Department of Medical Biophysics and Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  3. Beirne Carter Center for Immunology Research, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
  4. Cytheris Incorporated, Issy les Moulineaux, France.
  5. Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology, and Hygiene, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
  6. Institute for Infection Immunology, Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, Hanover, Germany.
  7. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence to: Pamela S Ohashi1,2,7 e-mail: pohashi@uhnres.utoronto.ca

* In the version of this article initially published, the two right histological sections in Figure 5a were duplicated in Figure 5b. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.


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