Multimodal delineation of a layer of effector function among exhausted CD8 T cells in tumors

The anti-tumor function of CD8 T cells is limited through well-established pathways of T cell exhaustion (T_EX). Strategies to capture emergent functional states amongst this dominant trajectory of dysfunction are necessary to find pathways to durable anti-tumor immunity. By leveraging transcriptional reporting (by the fluorescent protein TFP) of the T cell activation marker Cd69, related to upstream AP-1 transcription factors, we define a classifier for potent versus suboptimal CD69+ activation states arising from T cell stimulation. In tumors, this delineation acts an additional functional readout along the T_EX differentiation trajectory, within and across T_EX subsets, marked by enhanced effector cytokine and granzyme B production. The more potent state remains differentially prominent in a T cell-mediated tumor clearance model, where they also show increased engagement in the microenvironment and are superior in tumor cell killing. Employing multimodal CITE-Seq in human head and neck tumors enables a similar strategy to identify Cd69RNA^hiCD69+ cells that also have enhanced functional features in comparison to Cd69RNA^loCD69+ cells, again within and across intratumoral CD8 T cell subsets. Refining the contours of the T cell functional landscape in tumors in this way paves the way for the identification of rare exceptional effectors, with imminent relevance to cancer treatment.