Abstract
Γδ T cells contribute to the anti-tumor immunity within the tumor microenvironment in various cancers. Despite their well-described effector functions, recent studies correlated their presence in the tumor microenvironment with solid tumor progression suggesting that γδ T cells may display pro-tumor activities. My project aimed to characterize those regulatory γδ T cells and decipher their role in cancer.We demonstrated in vitro that inflammatory signals promote the development of a regulatory γδ T cell sub-population characterized by the expression of CD73 and displaying immunosuppressive functions through the production of immunosuppressive molecules such as IL-10, adenosine and the angiogenic and chemotactic factor IL-8. The challenge associated with the characterization of CD73+ γδ T cells resides in assessing their existence in vivo as well as their relevance in human cancers. We showed in human breast cancer that ~20% of tumor infiltrating γδ T lymphocytes (TILs) expressed CD73 and displayed the same immunosuppressive functions as described in vitro, suggesting that they could promote tumor development via these mechanisms. In line with these observations, we showed that the presence of γδ TILs is associated with late tumor grades in breast cancer. We extended such observations to ovarian cancer and showed that the density of CD73+ γδ TILs negatively correlates with patient survival, suggesting that CD73+ γδ TILs density could be used as a prognosis factor. Using Imaging by Mass Cytometry, we investigated the cellular networks of regulatory γδ TILs (CD73+) and their effector counterpart (CD73-) in breast and ovarian tumors to better understand their role in cancer. Our data show different ecosystems for CD73+ compared to CD73- γδ TILs reinforcing the idea that CD73+ and CD73- γδ T cells are functionally different.Altogether, these data improve our knowledge on human γδ T cell biology during cancer development, with the in-depth characterization of the new regulatory γδ T cell subset, their localization and their functions within the tumor microenvironment.