Abstract 6736: Overcome the challenge for intratumoral injection of STING agonist for pancreatic cancer by systemic administration

Abstract Objective: Due to the challenge for intratumoral administration, innate agonists have not made it beyond preclinical studies for efficacy testing in most of tumor types. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a T-cell excluded or deserted tumor microenvironment. Innate agonist treatments may serve as a T cell priming mechanism to sensitize PDACs to anti-PD-1 antibody (a-PD-1) treatment. Design: Using a transplant murine model with spontaneously formed liver metastasis and also the genetically engineered KPC mouse model that spontaneously develops PDAC, we compared the antitumor efficacy between intrahepatic/intratumoral and intramuscular systemic administration of BMS-986301, a next-generation STING agonist. Flow cytometry, Nanostring, and cytokine assays were used to evaluate local and systemic immune responses. Results: The study demonstrated that administration of STING agonist systemically via intramuscular injection is equivalent or potentially superior to its intratumoral injection in inducing both effector T cell response and antitumor efficacy. Compared to intratumoral administration, T cell exhaustion and immunosuppressive signals induced by systemic administration were attenuated. Nonetheless, either local or systemic treatment of STING agonist was associated with increased expression of CTLA-4 in the tumors. However, the combination of a-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 antibody with systemic STING agonist demonstrated the antitumor efficacy in the KPC mouse spontaneous PDAC model. Our study also demonstrated the feasibility and antitumor efficacy of systemic administration of BMS-986299, a new NLRP3 agonist. Conclusion: For the first time, our study supports the clinical development of innate agonists via systemic administration, instead of local administration, for treating PDAC. Citation Format: Keyu Li, Junke Wang, Birginia Espinoza, Yirui Xiong, Nan Niu, Jianxin Wang, Noelle Jurcak, Noah Rozich, Arsen Osipov, MacKenzie Henderson, Vanessa Funes, Melissa Lyman, Alex B. Blair, Brian Herbst, Mengni He, Jialong Yuan, Diego Trafton, Chunhui Yuan, Michael Wichroski, Xubao Liu, Yuquan Wei, Lei Zheng. Overcome the challenge for intratumoral injection of STING agonist for pancreatic cancer by systemic administration [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 6736.