Local and Systemic Induction of an Abundant CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T Cell Population by Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Regulatory T (Treg) cells contribute to immune evasion by malignancies. To investigate their importance in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), we enumerated Treg cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and involved tissues from 30 newly diagnosed patients. CD25+FoxP3+CD127^lowCD4+ Treg cells were increased markedly in PBMC (median=20.4% CD4 T cells, n=20) versus healthy controls (median=3.2%, n=13; p<0. 001, rank sum test) and correlated with serum lactate dehydrogenase (n=14; R_s=0.79, p <0.0001) and disease stage. The median Treg percentage of CD4 T cells from early stages (Ann Arbor stage I and II, n=4) was 12.2%, whereas it was 25.4% in advanced disease (Ann Arbor stages III, IV or bulky stage II, ≥5cm, n=10; p =0.013). We also enumerated Tr1 cells, both in peripheral blood and involved tissue samples, and again compared with healthy controls but no significant differences were noted. We documented poor proliferation of T cells with mitogen ConA and almost none with recall antigens PPD and DPT in both PBMC and involved tissue samples (n=9). T cell hyporesponsiveness was reversed by depleting CD25+ cells (n=4), or by adding anti-CTLA-4 (n=3), supporting the view that Treg cells explain the systemic immunosuppression seen in NHL. A high proportion of Treg cells was also present in involved tissues (median=38.8% CD4 T cells, n=15) versus reactive nodes (median=11.6%, n=2, p=0.02). Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that a regulatory phenotype is induced from conventional T cells within the tumor microenvironment. When autologous CD25- PBMC fractions were incubated with tumor cells from patients (n=6) in vitro, there was consistent strong induction and then expansion of cells with the CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ phenotype of classic ‘natural’ Treg cells as indicated by CFSE dilution. This induction was dependent on tumor dose and was seen when we depleted lymphoid dendritic cells from the involved tissue cell suspension using anti-CD304, or enriched the tumor cells by positive selection of CD20+ cells. This population was confirmed to be suppressive in function (n=3). We also investigated the mechanisms of this induction. Both cell-cell contact and soluble factors appeared important. In two of four cases, some induction was also noted with transwell experiments or with tumor cell conditioned supernatant, indicating that in these cases soluble factors are also involved apart from direct cell-cell contact mechanism. Reports elsewhere suggest roles for prostaglandin E2, tryptophan catabolism, IL-9 and PD-1 interaction with its ligands in inducing a Treg phenotype. Thus, we used cyclooxygenase inhibitors aspirin and sulindac, the indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase (IDO) inhibitor 1-methyl tryptophan (1MT), anti-IL-9 receptor antibody and blocking anti-PDL-1 or anti-PDL-2 antibodies in four samples. None of these reagents inhibited Treg induction apart from one case where both anti-PDL-1 and anti-PDL-2 blocking antibodies inhibited Treg induction. We conclude that NHL cells are powerful inducers of Treg cells, which may represent a new therapeutic target.