The conventional dendritic cell 1 subset primes CD8+ T cells and traffics tumor antigen to drive anti-tumor immunity in the brain.

The central nervous system (CNS) antigen-presenting cell (APC) that primes anti-tumor CD8+ T-cell responses remains undefined. Elsewhere in the body, the conventional dendritic cell 1 (cDC1) performs this role. However, steady-state brain parenchyma cDC1 are extremely rare; cDC localize to the choroid plexus and dura. Thus, whether the cDC1 play a function in presenting antigen derived from parenchymal sources in the tumor setting remains unknown. Using preclinical glioblastoma models and cDC1-deficient mice, we explored the presently unknown role of cDC1 in CNS anti-tumor immunity. We determined that, in addition to infiltrating the brain tumor parenchyma itself, cDC1 prime neoantigen-specific CD8+ T-cells against brain tumors and mediate checkpoint blockade-induced survival benefit. We observed that cDC, including cDC1, isolated from the tumor, the dura, and the CNS-draining cervical lymph nodes (cLNs) harbored a traceable fluorescent tumor antigen. In patient samples, we observed several APC subsets (including the CD141+ cDC1 equivalent) infiltrating glioblastomas, meningiomas, and dura. In these same APC subsets, we identified a tumor-specific fluorescent metabolite of 5-aminolevulinic acid, which fluorescently labeled tumor cells during fluorescence-guided glioblastoma resection. Together, these data elucidate the specialized behavior of cDC1 and suggest cDC1 play a significant role in CNS anti-tumor immunity.