- 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
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.