Maria Semitekolou, Georgina Xanthou and colleagues recently published a paper in Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research

CD4+ T cells have emerged as critical controllers of anti-tumor immunity; still in the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, T cells are rendered exhausted and incapable of mounting effective responses. Our studies reveal that the cytokine activin-A augments anti-tumor immunity orchestrated by CD4+ T cells, in the context of lung cancer. Additionally, CD4+ T cell-specific ablation of activin-A signaling during lung tumor development, establishes an exhaustion molecular signature on CD4+ T cells, dictated by the transcription factors Tox and Tox2. Furthermore, we uncovered the potential of activin-A to enhance T cell responses of human non-small cell lung cancer patient tumor infiltrating cells. Overall, our study addresses key questions in the field of lung cancer immunology and foresees the exploitation of activin-A-conditioned CD4+ T cells in future therapeutic modalities, in the context of adoptive T cell therapy.

Activin-A impedes the establishment of CD4+ T cell exhaustion and enhances anti-tumor immunity in the lung
Morianos I, Tsitsopoulou A, Potaris K, Valakos D, Fari O, Vatsellas G, Bostantzoglou C, Photiades A, Gaga M, Xanthou G, Semitekolou M.
J Exp Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Sep 21;40(1):295. doi: 10.1186/s13046-021-02092-5. PMID: 34548096

pubmed