Sheng Yao Dai

All Publications

• Invivo bioluminescence imaging of granzyme B activity in tumor response to cancer immunotherapy. Cell chemical biology Chen, M., Zhou, K., Dai, S., Tadepalli, S., Balakrishnan, P. B., Xie, J., Rami, F. E., Dai, T., Cui, L., Idoyaga, J., Rao, J. 2022

  Abstract

  Cancer immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of cancer, but only a small subset of patients benefits from this new treatment regime. Imaging tools are useful for early detection of tumor response to immunotherapy and probing the dynamic and complex immune system. Here, we report a bioluminescence probe (GBLI-2) for non-invasive, real-time, longitudinal imaging of granzyme B activity in tumors receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors. GBLI-2 is made of the mouse granzyme B tetrapeptide IEFD substrate conjugated to D-luciferin through a self-immolative group. GBLI-2 was evaluated for imaging the dynamics of the granzyme B activity and predicting therapeutic efficacy in a syngeneic mouse model of CT26 murine colorectal carcinoma. The GBLI-2 signal correlated with the change in the population of PD-1- and granzyme B-expressing CD8+ Tcells in tumors.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.chembiol.2022.08.006

  View details for PubMedID 36103874

• Multiparameter Longitudinal Imaging of Immune Cell Activity in Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell and Checkpoint Blockade Therapies. ACS central science Xie, J., El Rami, F., Zhou, K., Simonetta, F., Chen, Z., Zheng, X., Chen, M., Balakrishnan, P. B., Dai, S., Murty, S., Alam, I. S., Baker, J., Negrin, R. S., Gambhir, S. S., Rao, J. 2022; 8 (5): 590-602

  Abstract

  Longitudinal multimodal imaging presents unique opportunities for noninvasive surveillance and prediction of treatment response to cancer immunotherapy. In this work we first designed a novel granzyme B activated self-assembly small molecule, G-SNAT, for the assessment of cytotoxic T lymphocyte mediated cancer cell killing. G-SNAT was found to specifically detect the activity of granzyme B within the cytotoxic granules of activated T cells and engaged cancer cells in vitro. In lymphoma tumor-bearing mice, the retention of cyanine 5 labeled G-SNAT-Cy5 correlated to CAR T cell mediated granzyme B exocytosis and tumor eradication. In colorectal tumor-bearing transgenic mice with hematopoietic cells expressing firefly luciferase, longitudinal bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging revealed that after combination treatment of anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4, the dynamics of immune cell trafficking, tumor infiltration, and cytotoxic activity predicted the therapeutic outcome before tumor shrinkage was evident. These results support further development of G-SNAT for imaging early immune response to checkpoint blockade and CAR T-cell therapy in patients and highlight the utility of multimodality imaging for improved mechanistic insights into cancer immunotherapy.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acscentsci.2c00142

  View details for PubMedID 35647285