Chrystal Paulos, Professor and Co-leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Excited to share that our new study is now online ahead of print in Cancer Research.
TLR9 Agonists Potentiate Adoptive T Cell Therapy in Cancer through a B Cell–CD2 Costimulatory Axis
This work was led by the outstanding Dr. Ayana Ruffin, with co-senior leadership from Dr. Avery Posey, Jr., Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Gregory Lesinski at Emory, and me (Chrystal Paulos).
In this study, we discovered that TLR9 activated B cells can license CD8 T cells through a CD2 dependent costimulatory axis, improving T cell fitness, cytotoxic function, metabolic programming, and antitumor activity. Checkout our cartoon.
This story also builds on foundational work from Dr. Aubrey Smith, PhD, whose earlier JITC paper helped establish that B cells can imprint adoptively transferred CD8 T cells with enhanced tumor immunity.
Ayana’s work now pushes that biology further by defining CD2 as a key mechanism and showing how this pathway may be leveraged for next generation TIL and CAR T cell therapies.
Why does this matter? Because making cell therapies work better in solid tumors will require more than simply engineering the T cell. We need to understand the immune partners that help T cells persist, function, and fight inside hostile tumor microenvironments.
I am especially proud that this work reflects the kind of cell therapy science we are building at Emory and Winship Cancer Institute: mechanistic, collaborative, translational, and aimed squarely at improving therapies for patients with cancer.
Huge congratulations to Ayana and our full author team at Emory, Winship, and Penn.
Deep gratitude to Greg Lesinski, Avery Posey, Aubrey Smith, Megan Wyatt, Vasili Toliopoulos, and everyone (Anna Cole, PhD, Megen Wittling, Rachel Lynn Mason, James Carmouche, Soundharya Kumaresan, Mahmoud Abdelbary, Meredith Salzinger, and Yuan Liu), who helped bring this project across the finish line.
Science is a team sport. And in this story, B cells helped make adoptively transferred CD8+T cells better.”
To which Gregory Lesinski, Associate Director of Basic Research at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, added:
“Thrilled to be a part of this awesome AACR Journals paper on T cells adoptive cellt herapy cpg cancer research out of Chrystal Paulos, Avery Posey, Jr., Ph.D. Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, University of Pennsylvania collaboration and many others!
Congrats to Ayana Ruffin for taking this to the finish line.”
Title: TLR9 Agonists Potentiate Adoptive T Cell Therapy in Cancer through a B Cell-CD2 Costimulatory Axis
Authors: Ayana T Ruffin, Vasili Toliopoulos, Aubrey S Smith, Soundharya Kumaresan, Megan M Wyatt, Meredith Salzinger, Anna C Cole, Megen C Wittling, Rachel L Mason, James H Carmouche, Mahmoud A Adelbary, Yuan Liu, Avery D Posey, Gregory B Lesinski, Chrystal M Paulos
Other articles featuring Chrystal Paulos and Gregory Lesinski on OncoDaily.
