Abstract 5631: Personal neoantigen-targeting vaccination generates neoepitope-specific T cell responses in tumors of patients with glioblastoma

Personal vaccines directed at neoantigens arising from tumor mutations can induce neoepitope-specific T cell responses in patients with highly mutated tumors such as melanoma. It remains unknown if this approach can be successfully applied in tumors with low mutation frequency. We conducted a phase 1/1b study to determine the safety and feasibility of patient-specific neoantigen-targeting vaccination in patients with newly diagnosed, methylguanine methyltransferase (MGMT) unmethylated glioblastoma, administered following maximum surgical resection and conventional radiotherapy. Tumor-specific mutations were identified by whole-exome sequencing. Each vaccine, composed of up to 20 synthetic long peptides containing predicted tumor neoepitopes admixed with poly-ICLC, was administered subcutaneously on a prime-boost schedule. Among 8 treated patients, adverse events were limited to mild injection site reactions. Seven patients (88%) received a vaccine with ≥10 neoepitope peptides (median 12, range, 7-20), with median time to vaccine initiation of 18.6 weeks from surgery. All patients died from progressive disease. Median progression-free and overall survival was 7.5 months (95% CI: 6.2, 9.7) and 16.8 months (90% CI: 9.6, 21.3), respectively. 3 patients dropped out of the study due to disease progression. We analyzed vaccine responses on 5 patients that got at least one booster immunization. All 3 patients who required dexamethasone during vaccine priming failed to generate interferon-γ responses in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In contrast, 2 patients who did not receive dexamethasone during vaccine priming, generated robust de novo immune responses against multiple personal neoantigens. Circulating vaccine-induced polyfunctional neoantigen-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were enriched for memory and activated phenotypes, and increased numbers of tumor-infiltrating CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were detected in these 2 patients. T cell receptor analysis identified identical clonotypes isolated from post-vaccination glioblastoma tissue and peripheral blood including a clonotype specific for ARHGAP35, a neoantigen targeted by vaccination. To our knowledge we provide the first evidence that tumor specific T cells can traffic from the periphery into glioblastoma tumors and that neoantigen-targeting vaccines can favorably alter the tumor immune milieu of glioblastoma. In conclusion, individualized, multi-neoepitope vaccination is feasible, safe, and generates neoantigen-specific T cell responses in the periphery and intracranial tumors of patients with glioblastoma. Citation Format: Derin B. Keskin, Itay Tirosh, Annabelle Anandappa, Jing Sun, Nathan D. Mathewson, Sachet A. Shukla, Evisa Gjini, Shuqiang Li, Letitia Li, Anita Giobbie-Hurder, Phuong M. Le, Zhuting Hu, Wandi Zhang, Oriol Olive, Christine McCluskey, Heather Daley, Patrick Y. Wen, Antonio E. Chiocca, Maegan Harden, Niall Lennon, Stacey Gabriel, Gad Getz, Donna Neuberg, Jerome Ritz, Eric S. Lander, Aviv Regev, Kai Wucherpfennig, Mario Suva, Edward F. Fritsch, Rodig Scott, Keith L. Ligon, Kenneth J. Livak, Hacohen Nir, Patrick A. Ott, Catherine J. Wu, David A. Reardon. Personal neoantigen-targeting vaccination generates neoepitope-specific T cell responses in tumors of patients with glioblastoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5631.