Keynote Presentation: Immunogenomic Characterization of Tumor-Reactive TIL in Lung Cancers w/ Live Q&A

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for more deaths than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. Of patients with NSCLC, 20% initially present with stage I or II disease, for which neoadjuvant PD-1 blockade combined with chemotherapy is now the standard of care. The success of PD-1 blockade is predicated on the fact that a critical end-effector of anti-tumor immunity is the T cell. We and others have demonstrated the role of CD4+ (helper) and CD8+ (effector) T cells targeting epitopes derived from tumor somatic mutations (neoantigens) in response to anti-PD-1 in metastatic NSCLC. Additionally, many groups have examined intratumoral characteristics of T cells at the single cell level in human cancers, but these studies suffer from a fundamental limitation: they cannot distinguish true tumor-specific T cells from T cells with irrelevant antigen specificity. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how our lab is developing innovative methods to better detect and study tumor-reactive TIL in the context of resectable lung cancers.