Clin Cancer Res: Immunotherapy targeting HPV16/18 produces a strong immune response in HPV-related head and neck cancers

About 20% of patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCCa) have a clinical response to stage death (PD-1) receptor-oriented antibodiesNew viral antigens, such as HPV16/18's E6/E7 protein, are attractive therapeuticimmunetargets and provide an immunoactivation strategy that may be complementary to PD-1 inhibitionwe reported Ib/II safety, tolerance and immunogenicity results for immunotherapy delivered by CellECTRA constant current device electro-perforation with MEDI0457 (DNA immunotherapy targeting HPV16/18 E6/E7 with IL12 encoded plasmids)Twenty-two patients with local late-stage, p16-plus HNSCCa received MEDI0457results showed that MEDI0457 was associated with mild injection site reactions, but no adverse events of 3-5 (AE) associated with treatment were not notedOf the 21 assessable patients, 18 showed increased antigen-specific T-cell activity through IFN-ELISpot, and noted that the continuous cell response of more than 100 speckic formation units (SFU)/106 peripheral blood mononucleic cells (PBMCs) continued for one yearThe induction of HPV-specific CD8-T cells was observedMEDI0457 metastasized the CD8/FoxP3 plus ratio of 4 of the 5 immunotherapy tumor samples, and increased the number of perforin-immune immersions in all 5 patientsIn one patient, metastatic disease was treated with anti-PD-1 to achieve a rapid and long-lasting full responseFlow cell analysis showed that HPV16-specific PD-1 plus CD8-T cells were induced, which were not available before MEDI0547 (0% vs 1.8%)in general, these data show that MEDI0457 can produce a long-lasting HPV16/18 antigen-specific peripheral andtumor immunodeficiencyresponseThis method can be used as a supplementary strategy for PD-1/PD-L1 to inhibit HPV-related HNSCCa to improve therapeutic effectiveness