Angélique Girod, S. Jacobelli, Marylène Garcette, Nadège Bercovici, Marie-Françoise Avril, Maxime Chapon, Alain Trautmann, Alexandre Rouquette, Agnès Carlotti, Shu-Fang Wang, Armelle Prévost-Blondel, Eve Maubec, Eduardo Marinho, David Farhi, Stéphane Fouquet, Clotilde Randriamampita, Cécile Badoual, [Institut Cochin] Departement Infection, immunité, inflammation, Institut Cochin (IC UM3 (UMR 8104 / U1016)), and Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Paris (UP)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Paris (UP)
Programmed death-1 (PD-1) is involved in T-cell tolerance to self-antigens. For some cancers, it has been suggested that the expression of a ligand of PD-1, namely PD-L1, could contribute to tumor escape from immune destruction. Nevertheless, the relationship between PD-1 expression on tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes (TILs), disease stage, and TIL responsiveness is still poorly documented. In this study, we show that freshly isolated CD4(+) and CD8(+) TILs express substantial levels of PD-1 in primary melanomas. The expression of PD-1 was further increased at later stages in distant cutaneous metastases, especially on CD8(+) TILs. The expression of PD-1 ligands was frequent only in metastases, on both tumor cells and tumor-derived myeloid cells. TILs isolated from these cutaneous tumors are poorly reactive ex vivo, with blunted calcium response and IFN-γ production after TCR stimulation. Surprisingly, in distinct parts of a primary melanoma, either invasive or regressing, we show that TILs similarly express PD-1 and remain dysfunctional. The expressions of PD-1 and PD-L1 in metastatic melanoma lesions could be considered as witnesses of an unsuccessful anti-tumoral immune response, but the direct involvement of PD-1 in the severity of the disease, and the importance of TILs in tumor regression, remain to be established.