Leukemia is a prevalent pediatric life-threatening hematologic malignancy with a poor prognosis. Targeting immune checkpoints (ICs) to reverse T cell exhaustion is a potentially effective treatment for leukemia. Tissue resident memory T (TRM) cells have been found to predict the efficacy of programmed death receptor-1 inhibitor (anti-PD-1) therapy in solid tumors. However, the IC characteristics of TRM cells in leukemia and their relationship with prognosis remain unclear.
We employed multi-color flow cytometry to evaluate the frequencies of CD103+CD4+ and CD103+CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood (PB) of patients with acute myeloid leukemia and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia compared to healthy individuals. We examined the expression patterns of PD-1 and T cell immunoreceptor with immunoglobulin and ITIM domain (TIGIT) within the circulating CD103+ T cell subsets affected by leukemia. To further elucidate the immunological landscape, we assessed the differentiation status of CD103+ T cells across various disease states in patients with leukemia.
Our findings showed a significant increase in the frequency of CD103+CD8+ T cells in the PB of patients with leukemia who had achieved complete remission (CR) compared to those in the
The data indicate that circulating higher frequency of CD103+CD8+ T cells with lower expression of PD-1 and TIGIT are associated with favorable outcomes in patients with leukemia. This suggests a potential role of TRM cells in leukemia prognosis and provides a foundation for developing targeted immunotherapies.