NKG2A and HLA-E define an alternative immune checkpoint axis in bladder cancer

Single-cell RNA sequencing data used in the following article:

NKG2A and HLA-E define an alternative immune checkpoint axis in bladder cancer
https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(22)00369-5

Authors:
Bérengère Salomé, John P. Sfakianos, Daniel Ranti, Jorge Daza, Christine Bieber, Andrew Charap, Christian Hammer, Romain Banchereau, Adam M. Farkas, Dan Fu Ruan, Sudeh Izadmehr, Daniel Geanon, Geoffrey Kelly, Ronaldo M. de Real, Brian Lee, Kristin G. Beaumont, Sanjana Shroff, Yuan Shuo A. Wang, Ying-chih Wang, Tin Htwe Thin, Monica Garcia-Barros, Everardo Hegewisch-Solloa, Emily M. Mace, Li Wang, Timothy O’Donnell, Diego Chowell, Ruben Fernandez-Rodriguez, Mihaela Skobe, Nicole Taylor, Seunghee Kim-Schulze, Robert P. Sebra, Doug Palmer, Eleanor Clancy-Thompson, Scott Hammond, Alice O. Kamphorst, Karl-Johan Malmberg, Emanuela Marcenaro, Pedro Romero, Rachel Brody, Mathias Viard, Yuko Yuki, Maureen Martin, Mary Carrington, Reza Mehrazin, Peter Wiklund, Ira Mellman, Sanjeev Mariathasan, Jun Zhu, Matthew D. Galsky, Nina Bhardwaj*, Amir Horowitz*

Summary
PD-1/PD-L1-blockade immunotherapies have limited efficacy in the treatment of bladder cancer. Here,
we show that NKG2A associates with improved survival and responsiveness to PD-L1 blockade
immunotherapy in bladder tumors that have high abundance of CD8+ T cells. In bladder tumors, NKG2A
is acquired on CD8+ T cells later than PD-1 as well as other well-established immune checkpoints.
NKG2A+ PD-1+ CD8+ T cells diverge from classically defined exhausted T cells through their ability to
react to HLA class I-deficient tumors using TCR-independent innate-like mechanisms. HLA-ABC
expression by bladder tumors is progressively diminished as disease progresses, framing the importance
of targeting TCR-independent anti-tumor functions. Notably, NKG2A+ CD8+ T cells are inhibited when
HLA-E is expressed by tumors and partly restored upon NKG2A blockade in an HLA-E-dependent
manner. Overall, our study provides a framework for subsequent clinical trials combining NKG2A
blockade with other T cell-targeted immunotherapies, where tumors express higher levels of HLA-E.