Peripheral immune features associated with severe immune-related adverse events and clinical benefit in checkpoint inhibitor-treated melanoma
Kovacsovics-Bankowski & Sweere. SMR (2023)
Poster Highlights
In this study, we used mass cytometry to characterize 30+ immune cell subsets before and during presentation of severe irAEs (grade 2+ that required clinical intervention) to identify immune features associated with irAE presentation.
Using unsupervised clustering and manual gating, we found that patients with severe irAE have 1.5x - 2x fewer TIGIT+ Treg and CD16+ NK cells at baseline and 2x-3x more activated CD38 and CD39+ central memory T cells during irAE presentation.
Some of these immune features, such as differences in TIGIT+ Treg cells were driven by individual categories of irAE, while others were not.
Interestingly, patients with severe irAE were 2x more likely to benefit from immunotherapy, and clinical benefit was associated with similar immune features as severe irAE.
