Tumor-specific activation of folate receptor beta and its use in reprogramming the tumor microenvironment

Folate-TLR7 agnost was designed to reprogram the FRβ-expressing TAMs/MDSCs in the tumor microenvironemt. We used single cell RNAseq to demonstrate that this selective repolarization of myeloid cells in solid tumors not only changes their properties towards a less immunosuppressive phenotype, but also induces a general proinflammatory transition throughout the entire tumor mass. Tumors from either FA-TLR7 agonist or vehicle treated mice were isolated, digested for single cell RNAseq. The changes of targeted myeloid cells and other cells that impacted indirectly (T cell/ NK cells, fibrobalsts, etc) were analyzed.