Mature and migratory dendritic cells promote immune infiltration and response to anti-PD-1 checkpoint blockade in metastatic melanoma
- Jiekun Yang
- Cassia Wang
- Doris Fu
- Li-Lun Ho
- Kyriakitsa Galani
- Lee Chen
- Jose Gonzalez
- Jolene Fu
- Amy Y. Huang
- Dennie T. Frederick
- Liang He
- Mukta Asnani
- Rahul Tacke
- Emily J. Robitschek
- Sandeep K. Yadav
- Wentao Deng
- Kelly P. Burke
- Tatyana Sharova
- Ryan J. Sullivan
- Sarah Weiss
- Kunal Rai
- David Liu
- Genevieve M. Boland
- Manolis Kellis
2025-09-01
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer therapy, yet most patients fail to achieve durable responses. To better understand the tumor microenvironment (TME), we analyze single-cell RNA-seq (~189 K cells) from 36 metastatic melanoma samples, defining 14 cell types, 55 subtypes, and 15 transcriptional hallmarks of malignant cells. Correlations between cell subtype proportions reveal six distinct clusters, with a mature dendritic cell subtype enriched in immunoregulatory molecules (mregDC) linked to naive T and B cells. Importantly, mregDC abundance predicts progression-free survival (PFS) with ICIs and other therapies, especially when combined with the TCF7 + /– CD8 T cell ratio. Analysis of an independent cohort (n = 318) validates mregDC as a predictive biomarker for anti-CTLA-4 plus anti-PD-1 therapies. Further characterization of mregDCs versus conventional dendritic cells (cDC1/cDC2) highlights their unique transcriptional, epigenetic (single-nucleus ATAC-seq data for cDCs from 14 matched samples), and interaction profiles, offering new insights for improving immunotherapy response and guiding future combination treatments.