The limited capacity of malignant glioma-derived exosomes to suppress peripheral immune effectors

Tumor-derived microvesicular exosomes permit intercellular communication both locally and systemically by delivering a snapshot of the tumor cell's constituents. We thus investigated whether exosomes mediate malignant glioma's facility for inducing peripheral immunosuppression. In Western blot and RT-PCR analyses, glioma-derived exosomes displayed exosome-specific markers, but failed to recapitulate the antigen-presentation machinery, surface co-modulatory signals, or immunosuppressive mediator status of their parent tumor cells. Treatment with glioma-derived exosomes promoted immunosuppressive HLA-DR^low monocytic phenotypes, but failed to induce monocytic PD-L1 expression or alter the activation of cytotoxic T-cells from patients' peripheral blood by FACS and RT-PCR analyses. Our results suggest that malignant glioma-derived exosomes are restricted in their capacity to directly prime peripheral immunosuppression.