The CD93 pathway and melanoma therapy

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Immune checkpoint blocker therapy has recently greatly improved survival of patients with late- stage melanoma. However, about 2/3 of patients do not benefit from this therapy. One of main hurdles is that many melanoma tissues lack effector CD8+ T cells. The immature and dysfunctional blood vessels actively limit T cell infiltration. Recently vascular normalization has been demonstrated to be able to facilitate effector immune cell infiltration and to improve cancer immunotherapy. a novel pathway in the IGFBP7/CD93 interaction, both of which are selectively upregulated in tumor vasculature. Our preliminary study indicates that disrupting this interaction in vivo normalizes tumor vessels to reduce hypoxia and improve tumor perfusion in mouse melanoma models. Our examination of tumor tissues reveals that blockade of this pathway could reinvigorate tumor blood vessels to promote T cell infiltration while limit myeloid-derived suppressor cells in the tumor. Here we hypothesize that upregulation of this pathway contributes to the tumor vascular abnormality and targeting this pathway will offer a novel approach to facilitate melanoma immunotherapy. We will dissect how this pathway is induced in the tumor and consequently leads to tumor vascular dysfunction and then tumor outgrowth. The mechanisms by which CD93 regulates immune cell infiltration, as well as its expression causing resistance to anti-PD1 therapy, will be evaluated. By the completion of these studies, we will gain insight into the biological role of this pathway in the cancer microenvironment of melanoma and, more importantly, provide a new strategy of promoting immunotherapy in melanoma. Our studies uncovered