Impact of chemotherapy and immunotherapy on the composition and function of immune cells in COVID-19 convalescent with gynecological tumors

作者：Qin, Tianyu; Guo, Ensong; Lu, Funian; Fu, Yu; Liu, Si; Xiao, Rourou; Wu, Xue; Liu, Chen; He, Chao; Wang, Zizhuo; Qin, Xu; Hu, Dianxing; You, Lixin; Li, Fuxia; Li, Xi; Huang, Xiaoyuan; Ma, Ding; Xu, Xiaoyan; Yang, Bin^*; Fan, Junpeng^*

来源：Aging-US, 2021, 13(23): 24943-24962.

• COVID-19
• tumor
• chemotherapy
• ICIs
• single cell sequencing

Ongoing pandemic and potential resurgence of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has prompted urgent efforts to investigate the immunological memory of convalescent patients, especially in patients with active cancers. Here we performed single-cell RNA sequencing in peripheral blood samples of 3 healthy donors (HDs), 4 COVID-19 patients (Covs) and 4 COVID-19 patients with active gynecological tumor (TCs) pre- and post- antitumor treatment. All Covs patients had recovered from their acute infection. Interestingly, the molecular features of PBMCs in TCs are similar to that in Covs, suggesting that convalescent COVID-19 with gynecologic tumors do not have major immunological changes and may be protected against reinfection similar to COVID19 patients without tumors. Moreover, the chemotherapy given to these patients mainly caused neutropenia, while having little effect on the proportion and functional phenotype of T and B cells, and T cell clonal expansion. Notably, anti-PD-L1 treatment massively increased cytotoxic scores of NK cells, and T cells, and facilitated clonal expansion of T cells in these patients. It is likely that T cells could protect patients from SARSCoV-2 virus reinfection and anti-PD-L1 treatment can enhance the anti-viral activity of the T cells.

• 单位
  南方医科大学; 华中科技大学