Article
Author: Voorhees, Timothy J. ; Wang, Yi ; Jaglowski, Samantha ; Chan, Wing Keung ; Hanel, Walter ; Miao, Jessica ; Bezerra, Evandro ; Denlinger, Nathan ; Epperla, Narendranath ; Reynolds, Kelsi ; Wu, Dayong ; Baiocchi, Robert A. ; Zhang, Xiaoli ; Song, Chunhua ; Li, Zihai ; Sigmund, Audrey ; Sawalha, Yazeed ; de Lima, Marcos ; Vasu, Sumithira ; Jeon, Hyeongseon ; Reneau, John C. ; Kittai, Adam S. ; Alinari, Lapo ; Rubinstein, Mark P. ; Bolz, Robert M. ; Brammer, Jonathan ; Bond, David A. ; Maddocks, Kami ; Peterson, Chelsea ; Huang, Xiaopei ; Chung, Dongjun ; Song, No-Joon ; Christian, Beth ; Yang, Yiping
AbstractChimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has revolutionized treatment for relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Robust biomarkers and a complete understanding of CAR T-cell function in the postinfusion phase remain limited. Here, we used a 37-color spectral flow cytometry panel to perform high dimensional single-cell analysis of postinfusion samples in 26 patients treated with CD28 costimulatory domain containing commercial CAR T cells for NHL and focused on computationally gated CD8+ CAR T cells. We found that the presence of postinfusion Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)+ CD8+ CAR T cells at the day 14 time point highly correlated with the ability to achieve complete response (CR) by 6 months. Further analysis identified multiple subtypes of CD8+ PD-1+ CAR T cells, including PD-1+ T cell factor 1 (TCF1)+ stem-like CAR T cells and PD-1+ T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin-domain containing-3 (TIM3)+ effector-like CAR T cells that correlated with improved clinical outcomes such as response and progression-free survival. Additionally, we identified a subset of PD-1+ CD8+ CAR+ T cells with effector-like function that was increased in patients who achieved a CR and was associated with grade 3 or higher immune effector cell–associated neurotoxicity syndrome. Here, we identified robust biomarkers of response to CD28 CAR T cells and highlight the importance of PD-1 positivity in CD8+ CAR T cells after infusion in achieving CR.