Personal neoantigen vaccines induce persistent memory T cell responses and epitope spreading in patients with melanoma

Nat Med. 2021 Mar;27(3):515-525. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-01206-4. Epub 2021 Jan 21.

Abstract

Personal neoantigen vaccines have been envisioned as an effective approach to induce, amplify and diversify antitumor T cell responses. To define the long-term effects of such a vaccine, we evaluated the clinical outcome and circulating immune responses of eight patients with surgically resected stage IIIB/C or IVM1a/b melanoma, at a median of almost 4 years after treatment with NeoVax, a long-peptide vaccine targeting up to 20 personal neoantigens per patient ( NCT01970358 ). All patients were alive and six were without evidence of active disease. We observed long-term persistence of neoantigen-specific T cell responses following vaccination, with ex vivo detection of neoantigen-specific T cells exhibiting a memory phenotype. We also found diversification of neoantigen-specific T cell clones over time, with emergence of multiple T cell receptor clonotypes exhibiting distinct functional avidities. Furthermore, we detected evidence of tumor infiltration by neoantigen-specific T cell clones after vaccination and epitope spreading, suggesting on-target vaccine-induced tumor cell killing. Personal neoantigen peptide vaccines thus induce T cell responses that persist over years and broaden the spectrum of tumor-specific cytotoxicity in patients with melanoma.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Antigens, Neoplasm / genetics*
  • Cancer Vaccines / immunology*
  • Epitopes / immunology*
  • Humans
  • Immunologic Memory*
  • Melanoma / immunology*
  • Melanoma / pathology

Substances

  • Antigens, Neoplasm
  • Cancer Vaccines
  • Epitopes

Associated data

  • ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT01970358