Impact of Diet and aPD1 on CD8 metabolism

Only a small fraction of patients with HCC benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. Recently published studies suggest that HCC in patients with NASH does not respond the ICI therapy. Indeed, we demonstrate that anti-PD1 therapy is not working in several murine NASH models. CD8+ T cells were identified as the effector of anti-PD1 therapy. We observed a proinflammatory phenotype if hepatic CD8+ T cells that does not explain the inefficacy of anti-PD1 therapy in NASH. However, our study revealed an impairment of intratumoral CD8+ T cells movement abilities in NASH. Additionally, a broad reduction of metabolic fitness was observed in hepatic CD8+ T cells NASH. This was restored by metformin treatment. The combination treatment of anti-PD1 and metformin reduced intrahepatic tumor burden in NASH, a finding with important implications for NASH patients. This GEO submission contains raw files for the CD8 nsolver microarray analyses. 12 samples: 3 REG Control (diet = standard mouse chow, no treatment), 3 REG aPD1 (regular diet, aPD1 treated), 3 MCD control (methionine/choline-deficient diet, no treatment), 3 MCD aPD1 (MCD diet, aPD1 treatment)