Développement de modèles précliniques humanisés autologues en immuno-oncologie
Identification of the human’s immune system implication in cancer has guided the biotech industry towards the development of numerous and promising cancer immunotherapies. However, in the era of immuno-oncology, a distinct lack preclinical models can simulate the interactions between a patient’s tumor and immune cells.  To tackle this issue, we developed humanized mouse models combining immune reconstitution of immunodeficient mice and injection of tumor cells lines from the same human donor. The use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) allowed the generation of multiple tumorigenic cell lines from a single donor, facilitating access to autologous immune cells necessary for mouse immune humanization. The transformation of primary or iPSC-derived cell lines was done using lentiviral transduction of proto-oncogenes telomerase (hTERT), oncogenic Ras (HRASV12) and simian virus 40 early region (SV40ER) encoding large and small T antigens (LgT and SmT).  This approach allowed to generate high grade, aggressive and undifferentiated tumors from primary fibroblasts and iPSC-derived hepatic cells, neural stem cells and astrocytes. In all cases, such tumors were efficiently recognized, infiltrated and often rejected by the implanted autologous immune system. However, partial rejection of most tumors allows for preclinical evaluation of targeted immunotherapies relying on the hosts’ pre-existing immune response. For instance, we could study the impact of PD-1 checkpoint blockade inhibition on tumor growth in fibroblastic tumors where a significant increase in tumor infiltration was observed, but without an associated decrease in tumor burden. We could also produce autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-expressing T lymphocytes against GD2 ganglioside, a previously described tumor antigen detected on our neural stem cell-derived tumor cells. Cytotoxic efficiency of these autologous CAR T cells could thus be validated in vitro. Finally, we used our fibroblast-derived tumor models in autologous and allogeneic settings to determine if mesenchymal stem cells’ (MSC) immunomodulatory potential could impact tumor growth. Our results showed that MSC had no effect neither on tumor emergence and growth nor on immune infiltration, suggesting therapeutic use of these cells should be safe regarding such tumors already harboring a strongly immunodeficient microenvironment. Overall, the novel models described in this thesis aim at improving the predictive capacity of mouse pre-clinical models in immuno-oncology by recapitulating some immune interactions between a patient and its tumor. The great flexibility of this approach will allow for easy adaptation to many research problematics both preclinical and fundamental.
Immunologie tumorale Cancer iPSC Transformation tumorale Tumor immunology Immuno-oncology Humanized mice Cancer immunotherapy Mesenchymal stromal cells Tumorigenic transformation