Longitudinal monitoring of tumor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors using noninvasive diffuse reflectance spectroscopy.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer treatment. However, there are currently no methods for noninvasively and nondestructively evaluating tumor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. We used diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to monitor in vivo tumor microenvironmental changes in response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in a CT26 murine colorectal cancer model. Mice growing CT26 tumor xenografts were treated with either anti-PD-L1, anti-CTLA-4, a combination of both inhibitors, or isotype control on 3 separate days. Monotherapy with either anti-PD-L1 or anti-CTLA-4 led to a large increase in tumor vascular oxygenation within the first 6 days. Reoxygenation in anti-CTLA-4-treated tumors was due to a combination of increased oxygenated hemoglobin and decreased deoxygenated hemoglobin, pointing to a possible change in tumor oxygen consumption following treatment. Within the anti-PD-L1-treated tumors, reoxygenation was primarily due to an increase in oxygenated hemoglobin with the minimal change in deoxygenated hemoglobin, indicative of a likely increase in tumor perfusion. The tumors in the combined treatment group did not show any significant changes in tumor oxygenation following therapy. These studies demonstrate the sensitivity of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to tumor microenvironmental changes following immunotherapy and the potential of such non-invasive techniques to determine early tumor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors.