- Somasundaram, Rajasekharan
- Connelly, Thomas
- Choi, Robin
- Choi, Hyeree
- Samarkina, Anastasia
- Li, Ling
- Gregorio, Elizabeth
- Chen, Yeqing
- Thakur, Rohit
- Abdel-Mohsen, Mohamed
- Beqiri, Marilda
- Kiernan, Meaghan
- Perego, Michela
- Wang, Fang
- Xiao, Min
- Brafford, Patricia
- Yang, Xue
- Xu, Xiaowei
- Secreto, Anthony
- Danet-Desnoyers, Gwenn
- Traum, Daniel
- Kaestner, Klaus H
- Huang, Alexander C
- Hristova, Denitsa
- Wang, Joshua
- Fukunaga-Kalabis, Mizuho
- Krepler, Clemens
- Ping-Chen, Fang
- Zhou, Xiangyang
- Gutierrez, Alexis
- Rebecca, Vito W
- Vonteddu, Prashanthi
- Dotiwala, Farokh
- Bala, Shashi
- Majumdar, Sonali
- Dweep, Harsh
- Wickramasinghe, Jayamanna
- Kossenkov, Andrew V
- Reyes-Arbujas, Jorge
- Santiago, Kenisha
- Nguyen, Tran
- Griss, Johannes
- Keeney, Frederick
- Hayden, James
- Gavin, Brian J
- Weiner, David
- Montaner, Luis J
- Liu, Qin
- Peiffer, Lukas
- Becker, Jürgen
- Burton, Elizabeth M
- Davies, Michael A
- Tetzlaff, Michael T
- Muthumani, Kar
- Wargo, Jennifer A
- Gabrilovich, Dmitry
- Herlyn, Meenhard
- et al.
Anti-PD-1 therapy is used as a front-line treatment for many cancers, but mechanistic insight into this therapy resistance is still lacking. Here we generate a humanized (Hu)-mouse melanoma model by injecting fetal liver-derived CD34+ cells and implanting autologous thymus in immune-deficient NOD-scid IL2Rγnull (NSG) mice. Reconstituted Hu-mice are challenged with HLA-matched melanomas and treated with anti-PD-1, which results in restricted tumor growth but not complete regression. Tumor RNA-seq, multiplexed imaging and immunohistology staining show high expression of chemokines, as well as recruitment of FOXP3+ Treg and mast cells, in selective tumor regions. Reduced HLA-class I expression and CD8+/Granz B+ T cells homeostasis are observed in tumor regions where FOXP3+ Treg and mast cells co-localize, with such features associated with resistance to anti-PD-1 treatment. Combining anti-PD-1 with sunitinib or imatinib results in the depletion of mast cells and complete regression of tumors. Our results thus implicate mast cell depletion for improving the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy.