CD56dim NK cell gene signature in melanoma patients with better and worse clinical outcomes

Natural killer (NK) cells are innate cytotoxic and immunoregulatory lymphocytes that have a central role in anti-tumor immunity and play a critical role in mediating cellular immunity in advanced cancer immunotherapies, such as dendritic cell (DC) vaccines. Our group recently tested a novel recombinant adenovirus-transduced autologous DC-based vaccine that simultaneously induces T cell responses against three melanoma-associated antigens for advanced melanoma patients. We examined the impact of this vaccine on the NK cell profile in melanoma patients. Relative immune cell population abundance was evaluated as previously described (Danaher et al. JITC, 2017). The abundance of the CD56dim NK cell gene signature was compared between pattients with better and worse outcome. 41 lesions from 19 patients were excised at three different time-points during this trial and total RNA was extracted. Samples were profiled on the nCounter® MAX platform with the PanCancer Immune Profiling Panel