Interferon-stimulated neutrophils as a predictor of immunotherapy response

Abstract

Despite the remarkable success of anti-cancer immunotherapy, its effectiveness remains confined to a subset of patients-emphasizing the importance of predictive biomarkers in clinical decision-making and further mechanistic understanding of treatment response. Current biomarkers, however, lack the power required to accurately stratify patients. Here, we identify interferon-stimulated, Ly6E^hi neutrophils as a blood-borne biomarker of anti-PD1 response in mice at baseline. Ly6E^hi neutrophils are induced by tumor-intrinsic activation of the STING (stimulator of interferon genes) signaling pathway and possess the ability to directly sensitize otherwise non-responsive tumors to anti-PD1 therapy, in part through IL12b-dependent activation of cytotoxic T cells. By translating our pre-clinical findings to a cohort of patients with non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma (n = 109), and to public data (n = 1440), we demonstrate the ability of Ly6E^hi neutrophils to predict immunotherapy response in humans with high accuracy (average AUC ≈ 0.9). Overall, our study identifies a functionally active biomarker for use in both mice and humans.

Keywords: Biomarker; STING; immunotherapy; interferon; melanoma; neutrophils; non-small cell lung cancer; response.