Ongoing pandemic and potential resurgence of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has prompted urgent efforts to investigate the immunological memory of convalescent patients, especially in patients with active cancers. Here we performed single-cell RNA sequencing in peripheral blood samples of 3 healthy donors (HDs), 4 COVID-19 patients (Covs) and 4 COVID-19 patients with active gynecological tumor (TCs) pre- and post- anti-tumor treatment. All Covs patients had recovered from their acute infection. Interestingly, the molecular features of PBMCs in TCs are similar to that in Covs, suggesting that convalescent COVID-19 with gynecologic tumors do not have major immunological changes and may be protected against reinfection similar to COVID-19 patients without tumors. Moreover, the chemotherapy given to these patients mainly caused neutropenia, while having little effect on the proportion and functional phenotype of T and B cells, and T cell clonal expansion. Notably, anti-PD-L1 treatment massively increased cytotoxic scores of NK cells, and T cells, and facilitated clonal expansion of T cells in these patients. It is likely that T cells could protect patients from SARS-CoV-2 virus reinfection and anti-PD-L1 treatment can enhance the anti-viral activity of the T cells.
Keywords: COVID-19; ICIs; chemotherapy; single cell sequencing; tumor.