Figure 6.

BEMPEG+NKTR-262 induces CD8⁺ T cells with greater cytotoxic capacity than BEMPEG+RT. (A) Percent of Nur77⁺CD8⁺ T cells in the tumor 7 days post-treatment (left). Percent of GzmA⁺ Nur77⁺CD8 T cells in the tumor 7 days post-treatment (right). N=8–14 from two independent experiments. One-way ANOVA with Šídáks multiple comparisons test. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ****p<0.0001. (B) Correlation between percent of Nur77⁺ CD8⁺ T cells and tumor area for either RT monotherapy (black square, left), BEMPEG+RT (blue circle, left), NKTR-262 monotherapy (Black square, right), or BEMPEG+NKTR-262 (red circle, right). Each point represents either a treated or non-treated tumor from a mouse that received the indicated therapy. N=16–19, tumors from two independent experiments. Simple linear regression. (C) Incucyte assay of CD8⁺ T cells isolated from CT26 tumors 7 days post-treatment incubated with CT26 cells in vitro for 40 hours. Tumor cell apoptosis was tracked by size and Caspase 3/7 staining; representative images of each condition are shown (top). Quantification of the dead (caspase3/7⁺) CT26 cells per total cell confluence over time. Data from one of three independent experiments shown (Bottom). *P<0.05, repeated measures ANOVA with Dunnett’s multiple comparison test. ANOVA, analysis of variance; NT, non-treated tumor; RT, radiation therapy; T, treated tumor.