Harnessing p53 to improve immunotherapy for lung cancer treatment.

Immunotherapy, especially immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), has become a critical therapy for lung cancer treatment in recent years. Tumor mutational burden (TMB) is one of the decisive biomarkers for predicting immune checkpoint blockade effect. Writing in Cancer Cell, Zhu and colleagues use autochthonous and syngeneic mouse models to show that p53 mutation and tumor heterogeneity may be responsible for resistance in lung cancer patients. Pole-induced high-TMB shows enhanced immunogenicity in KrasG12D mice, however, loss of p53 in KrasG12D PoleP286/+ mice can lead to an immune suppressive profile of lung tumors which diminishes immune response to ICB. Moreover, high TMB causes high shared mutations which helps promote immune protection and immune memory. Heterogeneity can drive immune escape to tumor cells causing resistance to ICB. Decreased cGAS/STING signaling may explain possible resistance to ICB. Based on the new model found by Zhu and colleagues for lung cancer, combined ICB with STING agonists or p53 inducers may be new therapeutic options to improve the efficacy of ICB for lung cancer patients with high TMB.