Technical choices significantly alter the adaptive immune response against immunocompetent murine gliomas in a model-dependent manner

Purpose Due to the recent rise in immunotherapy research to treat glioblastoma (GBM), immunocompetent mouse models have become increasingly crucial. However, the character and kinetics of the immune response against the most prevalent immunocompetent GBM models, GL261 and CT2A, have not been well studied, nor has the impact of commonly-used marker proteins and foreign antigens. Methods In this study, we compared the immune response in these models using flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry as well as investigated several factors that influence the immune response, including kinetics, tumor size, and expression of commonly-used marker proteins and foreign antigens. We hypothesize that these factors influence the immune response enough to warrant consideration when studying new immunotherapeutic approaches for GBM. Results CT2A-Luc, but not GL261-Luc2, drastically increased the number of T cells in the brain compared with wild-type controls, and significantly altered CT2A’s responsiveness to anti-PD-1 antibody therapy. Additionally, a larger cell inoculum size in the GL261 model increased the T cell response’s magnitude at day 28 post-injection. CT2A and GL261 models both stimulate a peak T cell immune response at day 21 post-injection. Conclusions Our results suggest that the impact of foreign proteins like luciferase on the intracranial immune response is dependent upon the model, with CT2A being more sensitive to added markers. In particular, luciferase expression in CT2A could lead to meaningful misinterpretations of results from immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) studies.