{"doi":"10.3389/fimmu.2022.961105","title":"Case report: A persistently expanded T cell response in an exceptional responder to radiation and atezolizumab for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer","abstract":"Most patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) do not achieve a durable remission after treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Here we report the clinical history of an exceptional responder to radiation and anti-program death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) monoclonal antibody, atezolizumab, for metastatic NSCLC who remains in a complete remission more than 8 years after treatment. Sequencing of the patient’s T cell repertoire from a metastatic lesion and the blood before and after anti-PD-L1 treatment revealed oligoclonal T cell expansion. Characterization of the dominant T cell clone, which comprised 10% of all clones and increased 10-fold in the blood post-treatment, revealed an activated CD8 + phenotype and reactivity against 4 HLA-A2 restricted neopeptides but not viral or wild-type human peptides, suggesting tumor reactivity. We hypothesize that the patient’s exceptional response to anti-PD-L1 therapy may have been achieved by increased tumor immunogenicity promoted by pre-treatment radiation therapy as well as long-term persistence of oligoclonal expanded circulating T cells.","journal":"Frontiers in Immunology","year":2022,"id":295772,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9508,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":571544,"name":"Yuexin Xu","orcid":"0000-0002-7140-6505","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":919477,"name":"Andrea Towlerton","orcid":"0000-0002-7472-789X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":982463,"name":"Marcin Kowanetz","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":982464,"name":"Priti S. Hegde","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":981998,"name":"Martine Darwish","orcid":"0000-0003-4490-2164","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":981999,"name":"Mahesh Yadav","orcid":"0000-0003-2168-8177","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":523587,"name":"Craig Blanchette","orcid":"0000-0003-4560-9613","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":422978,"name":"Shannon M. Ruppert","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":982465,"name":"Sarah A. Bertino","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":615643,"name":"Qikai Xu","orcid":"0000-0003-0622-0998","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":393091,"name":"Andrew Ferretti","orcid":"0000-0002-5426-5536","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":982466,"name":"Adam Weinheimer","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":90691,"name":"Matthew D. Hellmann","orcid":"0000-0002-2670-9777","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616647,"name":"Angel Qin","orcid":null,"position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363235,"name":"Dafydd Thomas","orcid":"0000-0001-6122-1366","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":571548,"name":"Edus H. Warren","orcid":"0000-0002-9570-2755","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":689237,"name":"Nithya Ramnath","orcid":"0000-0003-3641-5630","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":731328,"name":"David G. Coffey","orcid":"0000-0003-3544-8836","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":30,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:12.531553Z","pmid":"36159875","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}