WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Professor Peter Gibbs
 

Professor Marie-Liesse Labat

Joint Division Head, Personalised Oncology division – Cancer Research and Treatments Theme, WEHI

Unveiling the Dynamic Interplay: Immune Pressure and Tumour Evolution in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session
 

Only one in four lung cancer patients survive beyond 5 years, making lung cancer the biggest cause of cancer deaths globally, with over 1.8 M deaths worldwide /yr. While immunotherapy has led to major improvements for lung cancer patients, only 20% of patients respond to these treatments. Dissecting how immune pressure imposed by the tumour microenvironment can impact tumour evolution is essential to understanding mechanisms of immune evasion and developing better therapeutic strategies.

Our work showed that tissue-resident memory T cells present in the lung prior to tumour onset boosted immune cell recruitment to nascent tumours, accelerating tumour immune evasion through loss of MHC Class I protein expression, resulting in resistance to immune checkpoint inhibition. In established tumours, we utilised spatial proteomics and spatial transcriptomics to characterise the immune environment and tumour cells in non-small cell lung cancer. Stratification of tumours according to their immune microenvironment revealed that distinct tumour immune microenvironments were associated with long-term patient survival, while others were predictive of rapid relapse after surgery. Our analysis further revealed the existence of a discrete resident T cell subset associated with better survival.

This work highlights the dynamic interplay between immune and tumour cells in non-small cell lung cancer, defining the role of distinct T cell subsets in tumour evolution and relapse.

All welcome!