A Phase I/II Trial Comparing Autologous Dendritic Cell Vaccine
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Sarivalasis et al. J Transl Med (2019) 17:391 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-019-02133-w Journal of Translational Medicine PROTOCOL Open Access A Phase I/II trial comparing autologous dendritic cell vaccine pulsed either with personalized peptides (PEP-DC) or with tumor lysate (OC-DC) in patients with advanced high-grade ovarian serous carcinoma Apostolos Sarivalasis1, Caroline Boudousquié1, Klara Balint1,5, Brian J. Stevenson2, Philippe O. Gannon1, Emanuela Marina Iancu1, Laetitia Rossier1,5, Silvia Martin Lluesma1,5, Patrice Mathevet3, Christine Sempoux4, George Coukos1,5, Urania Dafni6, Alexandre Harari1,5, Michal Bassani‑Sternberg1,5† and Lana E. Kandalaft1,5*† Abstract Background: Most ovarian cancer patients are diagnosed at a late stage with 85% of them relapsing after surgery and standard chemotherapy; for this reason, new treatments are urgently needed. Ovarian cancer has become a candidate for immunotherapy by reason of their expression of shared tumor‑associated antigens (TAAs) and private mutated neo‑ antigens (NeoAgs) and the recognition of the tumor by the immune system. Additionally, the presence of intraepithelial tumor infltrating lymphocytes (TILs) is associated with improved progression‑free and overall survival of patients with ovarian cancer. The aim of active immunotherapy, including vaccination, is to generate a new anti‑tumor response and amplify an existing immune response. Recently developed NeoAgs‑based cancer vaccines have the advantage of being more tumor specifc, reducing the potential for immunological tolerance, and inducing robust immunogenicity. Methods: We propose a randomized phase I/II study in patients with advanced ovarian cancer to compare the immunogenicity and to assess safety and feasibility of two personalized DC vaccines. After standard of care surgery and chemotherapy, patients will receive either a novel vaccine consisting of autologous DCs pulsed with up to ten peptides (PEP‑DC), selected using an agnostic, yet personalized, epitope discovery algorithm, or a sequential combi‑ nation of a DC vaccine loaded with autologous oxidized tumor lysate (OC‑DC) prior to an equivalent PEP‑DC vaccine. All vaccines will be administered in combination with low‑dose cyclophosphamide. This study is the frst attempt to compare the two approaches and to use NeoAgs‑based vaccines in ovarian cancer in the adjuvant setting. Discussion: The proposed treatment takes advantage of the benefcial efects of pre‑treatment with OC‑DC prior to PEP‑DC vaccination, prompting immune response induction against a wide range of patient‑specifc antigens, and amplifcation of pre‑existing NeoAgs‑specifc T cell clones. Trial registration This trial is already approved by Swissmedic (Ref.: 2019TpP1004) and will be registered at http://www. clini caltr ials.gov before enrollment opens. *Correspondence: [email protected] †Michal Bassani‑Sternberg and Lana E. Kandalaft are co‑last authors 1 Department of Oncology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sarivalasis et al. J Transl Med (2019) 17:391 Page 2 of 10 Keywords: Ovarian cancer, Dendritic cell vaccine, Neoantigen, Neoepitope, Cancer immunotherapy, Cyclophosphamide Background extensively used for clinical therapies against malignan- Ovarian cancer (OC) is the primary cause of gynecologic cies [21]. Unfortunately, DC vaccines have demonstrated cancer-related deaths, with more than 300,000 expected limited efcacy in patients with advanced recurrent dis- new cases, and more than 190,000 estimated deaths ease [22]. Some promising results however suggest a need worldwide in 2020 [1]. New treatment approaches for for further optimization, including combination of difer- ovarian cancer care are urgently needed, as current thera- ent immunotherapy technologies and multiple antigens. pies, including cytoreductive surgery and platinum-based Key factors leading to the poor immune response in chemotherapy, do not cure most patients with advanced ovarian cancer include lack of well-characterized tumor epithelial ovarian cancer [2]. antigens, molecular heterogeneity, selective tumor anti- Te host immune system can recognize and target gen-loss (immuno-editing) and the immunosuppressive ovarian cancer [3], in which a variety of tumor-associated nature of the tumor microenvironment [23]. When vac- antigens (TAAs) have been demonstrated (HER-2/neu cines target defned non-mutated self-antigens or shared [4]; p53 [5, 6]; the folate binding protein [7], sialyated antigens that are overexpressed in the tumor, vaccine ef- TN [8], MUC-1 [9], NY-ESO-1 [10] or mesothelin [11] cacy is often low because T cell reactivity to self-antigens among others). Furthermore, patients presenting TILs is naturally reduced due to central tolerance [24]. Alter- in their ovarian cancer tissue show longer progression- natively, neoantigens (NeoAgs) that arise from somatic free and overall survival (PFS and OS) [3], indicating that DNA alterations as a result of genetic instability are can- tumor growth is under the surveillance of the immune cer-specifc and can be strongly immunogenic [25]. Neo- system, and suggesting that ovarian cancer is a good can- Ags are likely to be efective targets for tumor infltrating didate for immunotherapy [12]. Nevertheless, the efcacy T cells and can lead to successful immunotherapy treat- of immunotherapy may be decreased by the involvement ments [26], hence synthetic vaccines targeting patient- of various mechanisms of immune evasion in the tumor specifc NeoAgs can display increased efcacy against microenvironment including high expression of PD-L1 tumors with moderate or high mutation load. Tree [13], production of IDO [14], recruitment of regulatory recent phase I studies using personalized NeoAg-based T-cells (Tregs) [15, 16], or local and systemic dysfunction vaccines reported immunogenicity and interesting clini- of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) [17]. cal safety and efcacy results [27–30]. Cancer vaccines Whole tumor lysate vaccines Cancer vaccines are intended to “educate” the patient’s An alternative source of personalized antigens is the own immune system to generate efector T-cells spe- whole tumor lysate. In the case of ovarian cancer, tumor cifcally for tumor cells to be detected and destroyed. A cells can be easily recovered by cytoreductive surgery tailored cancer vaccine aims to target multiple patient- and tumor antigens can be obtained directly from the specifc tumor antigens and reduce side-efects by pro- patient’s own tumor cells by preparing a tumor lysate that tecting normal tissue and keeping tumors under immune contains both the TAAs and the private NeoAg without memory regulation for as long as possible [18]. Den- the hurdles of target identifcation and preparation [31]. dritic cell (DC)-based vaccines are a particularly attrac- Te immunogenicity of whole-tumor antigen vaccines tive option for immunotherapy, due to their low toxicity can be enhanced by diferent tumor lysate preparation profle, lack of invasive procedures and their potential to methods [31, 32]. During the fnal culture stage, tumor induce long-term efects through immunological mem- lysate is loaded onto the DCs and then the DC vac- ory [19]. DCs are unique immune cells responsible for cine is presented to the immune system via intranodal processing and presenting cancer antigens, and are capa- injection(s). Te advantage of these whole tumor vac- ble of initiating and regulating both innate and adaptive cines is that they target a whole range of antigens thus immunity [20]. DCs can present endogenous antigens reducing the chance of tumor escape compared to single as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I peptides and epitope vaccines. Tey are independent of HLA type and exogenous antigens as either HLA class II peptides or consist of epitopes for CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs) HLA class I peptides by cross presentation, thus efec- and CD4+ T helper (T) cells, leading to a more integral tively inducing antigen-driven T-cell responses. Mono- immune response [33]. Previous studies with DC vac- cyte-derived human DCs pulsed with TAAs have been cines loaded with whole tumor lysate have already dem- onstrated that patients with measurable disease, in cases Sarivalasis et al. J Transl Med (2019) 17:391 Page 3 of 10 such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma [34], melanoma [35], NeoAgs in ovarian cancer or renal cancer [36], may obtain clinical beneft. We also Early preclinical evidence suggested that ovarian can- reported previously on a vaccine generated using autol- cer was unsuitable for NeoAg-specifc vaccination [41]. ogous monocyte-derived DCs pulsed with autologous Subsequent analysis of human ovarian cancer speci- tumor lysate produced from tumor tissue dissociated into mens, however, indicated that ovarian cancer tissues single cells, oxidized and lysed using freeze–thaw cycles