Subclone of resistant CT26 murine tumor shows high sensitivity to VA7 virotherapy: A novel system to study innate immunity and antigen dominance in oncolytic immuno-virotherapy

Recently, attenuated Semliki Forest virus vector VA7 completely eliminated type I interferon (IFN) unresponsive human U87 glioma xenografts while IFN responsive mouse GL261 and CT-2A gliomas proved refractory to the oncolytic virotherapy. Here we describe in two clones of a well established Balb/c mouse tumor cell line, CT26 murine colon carcinoma, diametrically opposed IFN responsiveness and sensitivity to oncolytic virus. Both CT26WT and CT26LacZ clones secreted biologically active type I IFN in vitro upon infection but virus replication was self-limiting only in CT26WT cells. Total transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) and western blotting experiments revealed that in sharp contrast to CT26LacZ cells, CT26WT cells had strong constitutive expression of 56 different genes associated with pattern recognition and type I interferon signaling pathways, spanning two reported anti-RNA virus gene signatures and22 genes that have been reported to have direct anti-Alphaviral activity. Correspondingly, only CT26LacZ tumors were infectable in vivo, resulting in rapid central necrosis of the  tumors by 96 hours post infection and complete tumor eradication both in immunocompetent and in SCID mice. CT26LacZ tumor eradication by oncolysis induced 100% protective immunity against homologous CT26LacZ challenge but only 50% protection against heterologous CT26WT challenge, indicating LacZ immune dominance over shared antigens. We believe the two clone CT26 system  described herein constitutes a challenging yet realistic model for clonally and immunologically heterogeneous cancer where a strong therapy efficacy bias toward sensitive tumor subpopulations might falsely predict therapeutic success on a broad patient scale highlighting the necessity of successful pre-screening for responsive tumors. Overall design: RNA-Seq in CT26 tumor cell line

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Ruotsalainen JJ, Kaikkonen MU, Niittykoski M, Martikainen MW, Lemay CG, Cox J, De Silva NS, Kus A, Falls TJ, Diallo JS, Le Boeuf F, Bell JC, Ylä-Herttuala S, Hinkkanen AE, Vähä-Koskela MJ