A TNFR2 antibody by countering immunosuppression cooperates with HMGN1 and R848 immune stimulants to inhibit murine colon cancer

Immunosuppressive CD4+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) promote tumor immune evasion and thus targeting of Tregs has become an strategy in cancer immunotherapy. Tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNFR2) is highly expressed and important for the immunosuppressive function of Tregs in humans and mice. Thus, the benefit of targeting TNFR2 in cancer immunotherapy merits more investigation. A previous report identified a new murine monoclonal anti-TNFR2 antibody (designated TY101), which showed therapeutic efficacy in murine cancer models, but its mechanism of action was less understood. In this study, the capacity of a combination of immunostimulants to enhance the effect of this inhibitor of Tregs was investigated. We examined the efficacy of TY101 as an anti-tumor immune reagent combined with HMGN1 (N1, a dendritic cell activating TLR4 agonist) and R848 (a synthetic TLR7/8 agonist). This immunotherapeutic combination exerted synergistic antitumor effects as compared with any single treatment. The antitumor response was mainly mediated by the depletion of Tregs and stimulation of cytotoxic CD8 T cell activation. The result also suggested that the effect of TY101 was similar to that of anti-PD-L1 when used in combination with these immunostimulants. Therefore, we propose that treatment strategies of antagonizing TNFR2 on Tregs would behave as potent checkpoint inhibitors and can potentially be utilized to develop a novel antitumor immunotherapy.