Oral Presentation 49th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology 2021

The stromal landscape of human glioblastoma tumours: leveraging new knowledge to develop cancer immunotherapies (#69)

Lisa Ebert 1
  1. School of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive and deadly form of primary brain cancer, with no effective treatments available. However, targeted immunotherapies such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells represent a potential new treatment approach. To guide the rational development of such therapies, we have conducted a detailed analysis of the tumour and stromal cells in the glioblastoma microenvironment using single cell transcriptomics, high-parameter flow cytometry and tissue immunostaining. Key findings include (i) identification and characterisation of distinct populations of lymphocytes, macrophages, endothelial cells and pericytes within patient tumours; (ii) discovery of a promising CAR-T cell target antigen with expression not only on tumour cells, but also ubiquitous expression on tumour blood vessels; and (iii) detailed profiling of the homing receptors expressed by T cells within the glioblastoma microenvironment. These findings are now guiding our development of novel CAR-T cell therapies for glioblastoma by allowing us to identify optimal targeting approaches (including co-targeting of tumour cells and their supporting vasculature), and to engineer our therapeutic T cells for maximal tumour homing by mimicking the cues that guide endogenous T cells into tumours.