Interferon-induced lysosomal membrane permeabilization causes cDC1-deserts in tumors.
T cell immunity requires antigen capture by conventional dendritic cells (cDCs), digestion and transfer to draining lymph nodes for presentation to antigen-inexperienced T cells. cDCs type I excel as cancer-antigen presenting cells, due to their ability to phagocytose, slowly digest apoptotic cancer cells and translocate cancer antigens to the cytosol for loading to MHCI and cross-presentation to CD8 T cells 1-3. In tumor tissues cDCs1 become particularly scarce and this restricts anti-tumour immunity, immunotherapy responses and patient survival 4-8. Tumor cDC1 paucity is not fully understood and no specific treatment currently exists. Here, we find that type I interferons (IFN) induce lysosomal stress, lysosomal membrane permeabilization (LMP) and lysosomal-dependent cell death (LDCD) in cDCs1. Two parallel pathways downstream of IFNAR1 converged to induce cDC1 LDCD. Up-regulation of expression of lysosomal genes enhanced the proteolytic activity of lysosomes, while IFN-inducible guanylate binding protein-2 (GBP-2) accumulated in the membrane of the stressed lysosomes, leading to LMP, proteolytic enzyme release and death. Protease inhibition or GBP-2 repression rescued cDCs1 from LDCD and boosted their anti-tumor efficacy. GBPs are amongst the most abundant IFN-induced genes and known to form toxic pores in pathogen-containing vacuoles and pathogen membranes 9. GBP-2-driven LMP is likely due to the ability of GBP-2 to form pores on the lysosomes of cDC1s. This might have evolved as a physiological mechanism of antigen translocation to the cytosol for cross-presentation 10. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for more rational cDC1-directed immunotherapies. For instance, protease inhibition, GBP-2 downregulation or induced expression of LMP repair machinery may boost cDC1 efficacy in adoptive cell therapies or their use as live vaccines11-13.