iScience (Oct 2022)

Development of OX40 agonists for canine cancer immunotherapy

  • Damien Ruiz,
  • Chloe Haynes,
  • Jonathan Marable,
  • Chetan Pundkar,
  • Rebecca L. Nance,
  • Deepa Bedi,
  • Payal Agarwal,
  • Amol S. Suryawanshi,
  • Amarjit Mishra,
  • Bruce F. Smith,
  • Maninder Sandey

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 25, no. 10
p. 105158

Abstract

Read online

Summary: Recent breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy have provided unprecedented clinical benefits to human cancer patients. Cancer is also one of the most common causes of death in pet dogs. Thus, canine-specific immune therapies targeting similar signaling pathways can provide better treatment options for canine cancer patients. Here, we describe the development and characterization of two canine-specific anti-OX40 agonists to activate OX40 signaling. We show that canine OX40, like human OX40, is not expressed on resting T cells, and its expression is markedly increased on canine CD4 T cells and Tregs after stimulation with concanavalin A (Con-A). cOX40 is also expressed on tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in canine osteosarcoma patients. The canine-specific OX40 agonists strongly activates cPBMCs by increasing IFN-γ expression and do not require Fc receptor-mediated cross-linking for OX40 agonism. Together, these results suggest that cFcOX40L proteins are potent OX40 agonists and have the potential to enhance antitumor immunity in canine cancer patients.

Keywords