Customized Viral Immunotherapy for HPV-Associated Cancer

The viral-transforming proteins E6 and E7 make human papillomavirus-positive (HPV⁺) malignancies an attractive target for cancer immunotherapy. However, therapeutic vaccination exerts limited efficacy in the setting of advanced disease. We designed a strategy to induce substantial specific immune responses against multiple epitopes of E6 and E7 proteins based on an attenuated transgene from HPV serotypes 16 and 18 that is incorporated into MG1-Maraba virotherapy (MG1-E6E7). Mutations introduced to the transgene abrogate the ability of E6 and E7 to perturb p53 and retinoblastoma, respectively, while maintaining the ability to invoke tumor-specific, multifunctional CD8⁺ T-cell responses. Boosting with MG1-E6E7 significantly increased the magnitude of T-cell responses compared with mice treated with a priming vaccine alone (greater than 50 × 10⁶ E7-specific CD8⁺ T cells per mouse was observed, representing a 39-fold mean increase in boosted animals). MG1-E6E7 vaccination in the HPV⁺ murine model TC1 clears large tumors in a CD8⁺-dependent manner and results in durable immunologic memory. MG1-Maraba can acutely alter the tumor microenvironment in vivo and exploit molecular hallmarks of HPV⁺ cancer, as demonstrated by marked infection of HPV⁺ patient tumor biopsies and is, therefore, ideally suited as an oncolytic treatment against clinical HPV⁺ cancer. This approach has the potential to be directly translatable to human clinical oncology to tackle a variety of HPV-associated neoplasms that cause significant morbidity and mortality globally. Cancer Immunol Res; 5(10); 847-59. ©2017 AACR.