CELL INTELLIGENCE · 肿瘤细胞治疗研究

Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) is a type of personalized immunotherapy in which expanded immune cells are administered to patients with cancer.

However, single-cell populations, such as killer T cells, dendritic cells, natural killer (NK) cells, and NKT (NKT) cells, have been generally used, and their effectiveness remains limited.

Here, we established a novel culture method via CD3/CD161 co-stimulation and successfully expanded CD3 + /CD4 + helper T cells, CD3 + /CD8 + cytotoxic T cells (CTLs), CD3 - /CD56 + NK cells, CD3 + /CD1d + NKT cells, CD3 + /CD56 + NKT cells, CD3 + /TCRγδ + T cells, and CD3 - /CD11c + /HLA-DR + dendritic cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy donors; their respective numbers were 155.

5, 1132. 5, 5. 7, 117. 0, 659. 2, 325. 6, and 6. 8 times higher than those before expansion. These mixed immune cells showed strong cytotoxicity against cancer cell lines Capan-1 and SW480.

Moreover, both CD3 + /CD8 + CTLs and CD3 + /CD56 + NKT cells killed tumor cells in cell contact-dependent and -independent manners via granzyme B and interferon-γ/TNF-α, respectively.

Furthermore, the cytotoxicity of the mixed cells was significantly superior to that of CTLs or NKTs alone. A bet-hedging CTL-NKT circuitry is one potential mechanism underlying this cooperative cytotoxicity. Collectively, CD3/CD161 co-stimulation may be a promising culture method to expand multiple, distinct immune cell populations for the treatment of cancer.