Institute for Transfusion Medicine, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Institute for Transplantation Diagnostics and Cell Therapeutics, Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Front Immunol. 2021 Jan 29;11:586168. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.586168. eCollection 2020.
Cellular immunotherapy using chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) so far has almost exclusively used autologous peripheral blood-derived T cells as immune effector cells. However, harvesting sufficient numbers of T cells is often challenging in heavily pre-treated patients with malignancies and perturbed hematopoiesis and perturbed hematopoiesis. Also, such a CAR product will always be specific for the individual patient. In contrast, NK cell infusions can be performed in non-HLA-matched settings due to the absence of alloreactivity of these innate immune cells. Still, the infused NK cells are subject to recognition and rejection by the patient's immune system, thereby limiting their life-span and undermining the possibility for multiple infusions. Here, we designed genome editing and advanced lentiviral transduction protocols to render primary human NK cells unsusceptible/resistant to an allogeneic response by the recipient's CD8 T cells. After knocking-out surface expression of HLA class I molecules by targeting the B2M gene CRISPR/Cas9, we also co-expressed a single-chain HLA-E molecule, thereby preventing NK cell fratricide of B2M-knockout (KO) cells "missing self"-induced lysis. Importantly, these genetically engineered NK cells were functionally indistinguishable from their unmodified counterparts with regard to their phenotype and their natural cytotoxicity towards different AML cell lines. In co-culture assays, B2M-KO NK cells neither induced immune responses of allogeneic T cells nor re-activated allogeneic T cells which had been expanded/primed using irradiated PBMNCs of the respective NK cell donor. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of genome editing in primary allogeneic NK cells to diminish their recognition and killing by mismatched T cells and is an important prerequisite for using non-HLA-matched primary human NK cells as readily available, "off-the-shelf" immune effectors for a variety of immunotherapy indications in human cancer.
嵌合抗原受体(CAR)的细胞免疫疗法迄今为止几乎完全使用自体外周血来源的 T 细胞作为免疫效应细胞。然而,在恶性肿瘤和造血功能紊乱的重度预处理患者中,通常难以采集足够数量的 T 细胞。此外,此类 CAR 产品将始终针对个体患者。相比之下,由于这些先天免疫细胞不存在同种异体反应,NK 细胞输注可以在非 HLA 匹配的环境中进行。然而,输注的 NK 细胞仍会被患者的免疫系统识别和排斥,从而限制其寿命,并破坏多次输注的可能性。在这里,我们设计了基因组编辑和先进的慢病毒转导方案,使原代人 NK 细胞对受者的 CD8 T 细胞的同种异体反应具有抗性。通过靶向 B2M 基因的 CRISPR/Cas9 敲除表面表达的 HLA Ⅰ类分子后,我们还共同表达了单链 HLA-E 分子,从而防止 NK 细胞对 B2M 敲除(KO)细胞的同种异体反应杀伤 "自身缺失"诱导的裂解。重要的是,这些经过基因工程改造的 NK 细胞在表型和对不同 AML 细胞系的天然细胞毒性方面与未修饰的 NK 细胞没有功能区别。在共培养实验中,B2M-KO NK 细胞既不会诱导同种异体 T 细胞的免疫反应,也不会重新激活使用各自 NK 细胞供体的辐照 PBMC 扩增/启动的同种异体 T 细胞。我们的研究证明了在原代同种异体 NK 细胞中进行基因组编辑以减少其被错配 T 细胞识别和杀伤的可行性,这是使用非 HLA 匹配的原代人 NK 细胞作为各种人类癌症免疫治疗适应症的现成、"现成"免疫效应物的重要前提。
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