Xiangyu Chen, Jing Zhao, Shuai Yue, Ziyu Li, Xiang Duan, Yao Lin, Yang Yang, Junjian He, Leiqiong Gao, Zhiwei Pan, Xiaofan Yang, Xingxing Su, Min Huang, Xiao Li, Ye Zhao, Xuehui Zhang, Zhirong Li, Li Hu, Jianfang Tang, Yaxing Hao, Qin Tian, Yifei Wang, Lifan Xu, Qizhao Huang, Yingjiao Cao, Yaokai Chen, Bo Zhu, Yan Li, Fan Bai, Guozhong Zhang, Lilin Ye
Tumor-specific T cells are crucial in anti-tumor immunity and act as targets for cancer immunotherapies. However, these cells are numerically scarce and functionally exhausted in the tumor microenvironment (TME), leading to inefficacious immunotherapies in most patients with cancer. By contrast, emerging evidence suggested that tumor-irrelevant bystander T (TBYS ) cells are abundant and preserve functional memory properties in the TME. To leverage TBYS cells in the TME to eliminate tumor cells, we engineered oncolytic virus (OV) encoding TBYS epitopes (OV-BYTE) to redirect the antigen specificity of tumor cells to pre-existing TBYS cells, leading to effective tumor inhibition in multiple preclinical models...
April 12, 2024: Nature Cancer