Repolarizing the Tumor and Metastatic Microenvironments to Treat Patients with Pancreatic Cancer

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Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cancer (PDAC) is the 3rd most common cause of cancer deaths in the United States with a dismal 5-year overall survival of 9%. Surgical intervention is currently the only cure for PDAC, however, 80% of patients are deemed unresectable at presentation due to locally advanced and/or metastatic disease. Existing therapies are often unable to downsize locally advanced PDAC (LAPC) for surgical candidacy, and are also ineffective at providing distal tumor control. Therapeutic approaches capable of both local downstaging and recurrent/metastatic tumor control are desperately needed to improve resectability rates. This application will address the unmet need by translating an innovative combination immunotherapy to the clinic and exploring its effects on LAPC in humans. Our recently published work demonstrated that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), a less toxic, more effective strategy that focuses higher dose radiation precisely to the tumor, combined with the potent immune cell–stimulating cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12) encapsulated in polymer microspheres (IL-12MS) resulted in remarkable tumor control and durable cure in preclinical models. Microsphere technology represents an innovative tool that provides a slow, continuous release of cytokine intratumorally while also protecting the labile IL-12 protein from degradation by proteases. The combination of SBRT with IL-12MS not only strongly stimulated the adaptive arm of the immune system including cytotoxic T cells to destroy pancreatic tumor cells, but also had a repolarizing effect on cells of innate immune system converting typically immunosuppressive myeloid cells into ones with immunostimulatory potential. Moving this promising therapy into the clinic, we hypothesize that combined SBRT/IL-12MS therapy is safe and tolerable, and will improve progression-free survival and tumor downstaging to enable resection in LAPC. In Aim 1, we will establish a clinical trial exploring the first-in-human use of SBRT followed by ultrasound- guided IL-12MS delivery in patients with unresectable LAPC. The main objective is to evaluate safety and tolerability, and the secondary objective is to evaluate efficacy and overall outcome. Aim 2 will perform corollary studies on peripheral blood along with baseline and on-study tumor biopsies collected from enrolled patients. These data will address whether SBRT/IL-12MS repolarizes the tumor microenvironment (TME) from an immunologically “cold” tumor to one that is immunologically “hot”. Aim 3 will utilize preclinical modelling to develop a strategy to treat metastatic PDAC using SBRT/IL-12MS therapy. These results are essential in order to expand this therapy into metastatic patients where there are little to no effective treatments. Overall, our proposed application builds on promising preclinical data showing the potential efficacy of combined SBRT/IL- 12MS therapy for patients with LAPC/metastatic lesions. This technologically innovative strategy utilizes a unique strategy of repolarizing the TME to treat this recalcitrant malignancy for which there are few effective therapies.