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Low neoantigen expression and poor T-cell priming underlie early immune escape in colorectal cancer

Nature Cancer volume 2, pages 1071–1085 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Immune evasion is a hallmark of cancer and therapies that restore immune surveillance have proven highly effective in cancers with high tumor mutation burden (TMB) (for example, those with microsatellite instability). Whether low TMB cancers, which are largely refractory to immunotherapy, harbor potentially immunogenic neoantigens remains unclear. Here, we show that tumors from all patients with microsatellite stable colorectal cancer express clonal predicted neoantigens despite low TMB. Unexpectedly, these neoantigens are broadly expressed at lower levels compared to those in colorectal cancer with microsatellite instability. Using a versatile platform for modulating neoantigen expression in colorectal cancer organoids and transplantation into the distal colon of mice, we show that low expression precludes productive cross-priming and drives immediate T-cell dysfunction. Notably, experimental or therapeutic rescue of priming rendered T cells capable of controlling tumors with low neoantigen expression. These findings underscore a critical role of neoantigen expression level in immune evasion and therapy response.

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Fig. 1: MSS CRC harbors both lower burden and expression of predicted neoantigens. Analysis of predicted neoantigens in human CRC (TCGA COADREAD) with high MSI (MSI-H), low MSI (MSI-L) and MSS.
Fig. 2: Development of an organoid system to interrogate neoantigen expression level in CRC.
Fig. 3: Low neoantigen expression drives impaired T-cell effector commitment and dysfunction.
Fig. 4: T cells in tumors with low neoantigen expression become progressively dysfunctional.
Fig. 5: Low neoantigen expression limits T-cell cross-priming.
Fig. 6: Therapeutic vaccination and agonistic anti-CD40 are efficacious in low neoantigen-expressing tumors.
Fig. 7: Immunotherapy refractory low neoantigen-expressing tumors remain vulnerable to antigen-specific T-cell killing.

Data availability

MS data generated in this study have been deposited on MassIVE under accession code MSV000087648. TCR-β sequencing data generated in this study have been deposited on immuneACCESS (https://clients.adaptivebiotech.com/pub/westcott-2021-nc). TCGA COADREAD data analyzed in this study are available for download on the National Cancer Institute Genomics Data Commons. All other data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Analyses were performed using open-source software and in-house scripts in R v.4.0.2 and Python v.2.7.13, which are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Quantification of CD4, CD8 and FOXP3 staining by IHC was performed using a custom CNN developed with Aiforia’s cloud-based image analysis platform. This is a commercial platform with proprietary technology and therefore did not generate any code. An interactive example of algorithm functionality can be provided free of charge upon request at https://www.aiforia.com.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Center support grant P30-CA14051, R01 CA233983 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. P.M.K.W. was supported by a Damon Runyon Fellowship Award. We thank K. Yee, J. Teixeira, K. Anderson and M. Magendantz for administrative support and our colleagues in the Jacks laboratory and the broader community at the Koch Institute of MIT for thoughtful discussions and technical advice, with special thanks to S. Spranger and members of her laboratory. We thank the Koch Institute Swanson Biotechnology Center for core support from the Flow Cytometry, Proteomics, Histology and Microscopy facilities, with particular thanks to A. Koller for help with design and analysis of MS experiments; M. Griffin, M. Jennings and G. Paradis for flow cytometry support; and K. Cormier and C. Condon for histology support. We are also grateful for a fruitful collaboration with T. Westerling and Aiforia in developing an automated CNN for IHC quantification. Finally, we thank T. Tammela and J. Roper for early inspiration and mentorship in the colonoscopy-guided injection technique.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Peter M. K. Westcott, Nathan J. Sacks, Jason M. Schenkel, Zackery A. Ely, Olivia Smith, Haley Hauck, Alex M. Jaeger, Daniel Zhang, Coralie M. Backlund, Mary C. Beytagh, J. J. Patten, Ryan Elbashir, George Eng, Darrell J. Irvine, Omer H. Yilmaz & Tyler Jacks

  2. Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Jason M. Schenkel

  3. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jason M. Schenkel

  4. Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    George Eng & Omer H. Yilmaz

  5. Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Darrell J. Irvine

  6. Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Darrell J. Irvine

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Darrell J. Irvine

  8. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Darrell J. Irvine

  9. Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Omer H. Yilmaz & Tyler Jacks

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Contributions

P.M.K.W. and T.J. conceived and directed the study. P.M.K.W., N.S., O.S., H.H. and A.J. carried out all aspects of the research, animal care and experimentation. J.M.S. provided essential conceptual and technical guidance in the design and execution of flow cytometry-based experiments. Z.E. designed and executed the pipeline to generate a list of predicted neoantigens from TCGA COADREAD. A.J. designed and carried out MHC-I pull-down and elution for MS. N.S. developed the triple IHC and an automated CNN for quantification in collaboration with Aiforia. N.S., O.S., D.Z., J.J.P., M.C.B. and R.E. generated lentiviral constructs and primary organoid lines used in the study. C.M.B. and D.J.I. provided guidance, reagents and technical assistance with therapeutic vaccinations. G.E. and O.Y. provided important guidance and reagents for organoid culture and colonoscopy-guided injections. All data analysis was carried out by P.M.K.W. The manuscript was written by P.M.K.W. and T.J. with feedback from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tyler Jacks.

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Competing interests

T.J. is a member of the Board of Directors of Amgen and Thermo Fisher Scientific and a co-founder of Dragonfly Therapeutics and T2 Biosystems. T.J. serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Dragonfly Therapeutics, SQZ Biotech and Skyhawk Therapeutics. None of these affiliations represents a conflict of interest with respect to any of the studies described in this manuscript. The Jacks laboratory also currently receives funding from Johnson & Johnson, but this did not support the research described in this manuscript. This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Cancer thanks Robert Samstein, Daniel Speiser and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Lower burden and expression of predicted neoantigens in MSS versus MSI-H CRC.

(a) Total expressed neoantigens by patient including hypermutant MSS cases (in purple). N = 62 MSI-H, 68 MSI-L, and 275 (including 9 hypermutant) MSS patients. All other plots exclude hypermutant MSS cases. (b) Mean expression of all neoantigens, regardless of clonality, by patient. N = 62 MSI-H, 68 MSI-L, and 266 MSS patients. (c-d) Analysis of patients with available ABSOLUTE purity for estimation of clonality (adjVAF). N = 50 MSI-H, 58 MSI-L, and 236 non-hypermutant MSS patients. (c) Empirical cumulative distribution function of mean neoantigen clonality (adjVAF) by patient. Significance was assessed by two-sided Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. (d) Total expressed clonal neoantigens with predicted HLA-I binding IC50 ≤ 500 nM by patient. (e) Mean allele-specific expression of clonal SNV-derived neoantigens by patient, excluding neoantigens with zero gene level expression but including those with zero allele-specific expression. N = 41 MSI-H, 53 MSI-L, and 219 MSS patients. (f-g) Abundance distributions of HLA-I ligandomes by MS in PDOs from MSS CRC patients CRC_01 (f) and CRC_04 (g) with epitope abundance above the median in gray, below the median in light blue, and neoantigens in red. Data from Newey, A, et al., 2019. Significance in (b), (d), and (e) was assessed by two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum test with Holm’s correction for multiple comparisons. Source data for panels (a-e) can be found in Source Data Fig. 1a-e.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Development of in vivo lentiviral and organoid models of CRC with neoantigen expression.

(a) Lentiviruses used to initiate colon tumors in Apcflox/flox and Apcflox/flox; Rag2-/- mice. (b) Efficiency of tumor formation 16 weeks post-injection. N = independent animals. Significance assessed by two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum with Holm’s correction for multiple comparisons. (c) Antigen expression in LucOS-induced tumors in Rag2-/- (left) and wild-type (right) mice at 12 weeks (colonoscopy above, bioluminescence below). (d) Efficiency of tumor induction with LucOS lentivirus at 20,000 and 100,000 transduction units (TU)/μl. N = 26 independent animals. (e) Antigen expression (bioluminescence). N = 26 independent animals. Significance assessed by two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum. (f) Antigen expression in LucOS-induced tumors with continuous T-cell depletion at 5 weeks (left) and 7 weeks after T-cell depletion (right), and colonoscopy (above). (g) Antigen expression versus relative tumor size (percent of colon occluded) following withdrawal of depleting antibodies. N = 4 independent animals. (h) Correlation of antigen expression and tumor burden in Rag2-/- (dark pink) and αCD4/8 (light pink)-treated mice 12 weeks post-injection with LucOS. N = 17 independent animals. Significance measured by Spearman’s rank-order correlation. (i) noSIIN, hiSIIN, and loSIIN organoids grown in the absence of WNT. Scale bars = 1 mm. Representative of N = 3 independent cultures. (j) Top 10 mutated genes in MSK-IMPACT colon adenocarcinoma (cBioPortal). (k) Lentiviral constructs used to generate organoids expressing only EGFP (noSIIN-GFP) and SIINFEKL expression variants. (l) Linear regression with Pearson correlation of SIINFEKL abundance (TMT-MS) versus mScarletSIIN MFI (flow cytometry). TMT-MS was performed on three independent preparations of each line. (m) H&E and IHC of noSIIN primary colon tumor 42 days post-transplant. Representative of N = 9 independent animals. Scale bar = 100 μM. (n-o) Images of dimSIIN (n) and midSIIN (o) tumors that formed in N = 2/9 and 1/9 transplanted animals, respectively. (p) Lentiviral constructs used to generate organoids expressing SIYRYYGL, ITYTWTRL, and VGFNFRTL at high and low levels. (q) ITYTWTRL and VGFNFRTL tetramer-specific CD8+ T cells infiltrating 42-day loITY and loVGF tumors by flow cytometry. Representative of N = 10 loITY and 9 loVGF transplanted animals.

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Extended Data Fig. 3 Low neoantigen expression drives reduced T cell function and diversity.

(a-m) Flow cytometry of CD44+/CD8+ antigen-specific T cells from lesions and DLNs post-transplant of hiSIIN (red) and loSIIN (blue) organoids. (a) Total antigen-specific T cells and (b) percent Ki67 positive in DLNs at 8 days. N = 10 hiSIIN and 9 loSIIN-transplanted animals. (c-d) TCF1 and GZMB expression in antigen-specific T cells in lesions at 8 (c) and 14 (d) days. Representative of N = 5-9 animals per line and timepoint. (e) Percent of antigen-specific T cells double-positive for TNFα and IFNγ, and (f) and representative expression of TCF1 and GZMB in this subset within DLNs at 8 days. N = 10 hiSIIN and 9 loSIIN-transplanted animals. (g) Inhibitory receptor expression on TCF1−/GZMB− antigen-specific T cells from tumors at 14 days. Representative of N = 6–7 animals per line. (h) Median percent of TCF1−/GZMB− antigen-specific T cells from tumors expressing 0 through 4 inhibitory receptors (PD-1, TIM3, LAG3, and 2B4) at 8 days. N = 9 hiSIIN and 9 loSIIN-transplanted animals. Bars = standard deviation. (i-j) Percent of SIINFEKL-loaded “target” splenocytes killed in DLNs and spleens from killing assay at 8 (i) and 14 (j) days post-transplant of hiSIIN and loSIIN organoids. N = 6–7 animals per line and timepoint. (k-l) Frequency of most common clonotypes (k) and Simpson diversity score (l) from TCRβ chain sequencing of antigen-specific T cells from hiSIIN (down-sampled) and loSIIN lesions at 8 days. N = 4 independent animals per line. (m-n) Total antigen-specific T cells isolated from lesions at 14 days across all lines (m) and versus mScarletSIIN MFI (n). (o-p) Percent of antigen-specific T cells from lesions at 8 days double-negative for TCF1 and GZMB across lines (o) and versus mScarletSIIN MFI (p). Dashed lines connect medians. Significance assessed by Spearman’s rank correlation. N = 5-9 independent animals per line in (m-p). Significance in (a-b), (e), (i-j), (l-m) and (o) assessed by two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum. Holm’s correction applied in (m) and (o). Source data for panels (a, h-j, m-p) can be found in Source Data Fig. 3a, i, n-r.

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Extended Data Fig. 4 T cells in tumors with low neoantigen expression lose effector function over time.

(a-b) Percent of antigen-specific T cells from DLNs and tumors at 42 days negative for TCF1 and positive for TIM3 (a), and positive for TCF1 and negative for TIM3 (b) by flow cytometry. N = 4-5 independent animals per line. (c-d) Percent of antigen-specific T cells from DLNs and tumors double-positive for TNFα and IFNγ at 42 days (N = 4-5 independent animals per line) (c) and both 8 and 42 days (d) (N = 4-9 independent animals per line). Red = hiSIIN, blue = loSIIN. Significance in (a-d) was assessed by Wilcoxon Rank Sum. Source data for panels (a-d) can be found in Source Data Fig. 4d-e.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Neoantigen expression is limiting for cross priming by canonical and non-canonical antigen-presenting cells.

(a) Flow cytometry gating strategy to determine percentage of CD11c+/CD103+ DC1s in BM-DC culture. (b) Schematic of BM-DC isolation, activation, and co-culture with naïve OT-1s. (c) Histograms of CD44, Ki67, GZMB, TNFα, and IFNγ expression on OT-1s representative of N = 4 co-cultures in the 400,000 lysed organoid cells condition. (d-f) Flow cytometric analysis of antigen-specific T cells from DLNs and lesions 8 days post-co-transplant of hiSIIN (red) and loSIIN (blue) organoids at separate sites. Percent TCF1+/GZMB− (d), TCF1−/GZMB+ (e), and TCF1−/GZMB− (f). N = 12 animals. Significance assessed by two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum. (g) Brightfield and fluorescent images of colons and tumors 6 weeks post co-transplant of loSIIN and hiVGF or hiITY, representative of N = 9 animals each. (h-j) Flow cytometric analysis of antigen-specific (CD44+/SIINFEKL+) CD8s in colon and DLNs 6 weeks post-transplant of hiSIIN in Batf3-/- mice. (h) Total SIINFEKL+ CD8s, with progressive tumors in gray (N = 4 animals) and rejected lesions in red (N = 4 animals). (i) Flow plot of SIINFEKL+ CD8s infiltrating rejected lesion, and (j) PD-1 and GZMB expression on CD44+/SIINFEKL+ CD8s (red) versus CD44− CD8s (gray) from rejected lesion representative of N = 4 animals. (k) Flow plots of H-2Kb/H-2Db expression on hiSIIN organoids post electroporation with Cas9 complexes targeting H2-k1 and B2m, or untargeted control (pre-sorting). Organoids were pre-treated with IFNγ. N = 1 experiment. Source data for panels (d-f) can be found in Source Data Fig. 5j.

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Extended Data Fig. 6 Design of preclinical trials to test therapies that rescue priming in low neoantigen expressing tumors.

(a) Schematic of vaccination and immunotherapy preclinical trial design and dosing schedule. (b-c) Flow plots of peripheral blood antigen-specific (CD44+/SIINFEKL tetramer+) CD8+ T cells from non-specific peptide-based vaccination (b) and no vaccination control (c) mice, representative of N = 7 and 8 independent animals, respectively. (d-e) Change in tumor size after 14 days of treatment, as determined by colonoscopy. ACT = adoptive cell transfer of OT-1s. N = 17 (d) and 10 (e) independent animals. Significance assessed by Wilcoxon Rank Sum of percent change in tumor size of treatment group versus no treatment, with Holm’s correction. (f) Fraction of mice with any metastases (liver, lung, or omentum), including only mice with progressive primary disease. N = independent animals. Significance assessed by 2×2 Fisher’s exact test of number of mice with metastases across all αCD40 treatment arms (with and without ICB) versus all other arms (no treatment and ICB single agent arms). Source data for panels (d-e) can be found in Source Data Fig. 6e-j, m.

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Westcott, P.M.K., Sacks, N.J., Schenkel, J.M. et al. Low neoantigen expression and poor T-cell priming underlie early immune escape in colorectal cancer. Nat Cancer 2, 1071–1085 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-021-00247-z

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