Reactivation of low avidity, tumor-specific CD8+ T cells correlates with immunotherapeutic efficacy of anti-PD-1

To investigate the phenotypic differences between high and low avidity tumor-specific CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) following anti-PD-1 therapy, we performed bulk RNA-seq on tetramer sorted GSW11-specific T cells from three regressing and three progressing CT26 tumors: giving three groups of total TethiCD8+CD44+ TILs from the progressing tumors (TetHighProg), TetloCD8+CD44+ TILs from the progressing tumors (TetLowProg) and TetloCD8+CD44+ TILs from the regressing tumors (TetLowReg), total 9 samples. Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for tumor-specific CD8+ T cells of different TCR avidities found in regressing versus progressing tumors following anti-PD-1 therapy: TethiCD8+CD44+ TILs from the progressing tumors (TetHighProg), TetloCD8+CD44+ TILs from the progressing tumors (TetLowProg) and TetloCD8+CD44+ TILs from the regressing tumors (TetLowReg)