Department of Oncology, Shenyang 242 Hospital, 110034, Shenyang, China.
Department of Oncology, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 610072, Chengdu, China.
BMC Cancer. 2024 Jan 23;24(1):119. doi: 10.1186/s12885-023-11806-1.
Adoptive cell therapy has achieved great success in treating hematological malignancies. However, the production of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy still faces various difficulties. Natural killer (NK)-92 is a continuously expandable cell line and provides a promising alternative for patient's own immune cells.
We established CAR-NK cells by co-expressing natural killer group 2 member D (NKG2D) and IL-21, and evaluated the efficacy of NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK cells in treating lung cancer in vitro and in vivo.
Our data suggested that the expression of IL-21 effectively increased the cytotoxicity of NKG2D CAR-NK cells against lung cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner and suppressed tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. In addition, the proliferation of NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK cells were enhanced while the apoptosis and exhaustion of these cells were suppressed. Mechanistically, IL-21-mediated NKG2D CAR-NK cells function by activating AKT signaling pathway.
Our findings provide a novel option for treating lung cancer using NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK cell therapy.
过继细胞疗法在治疗血液恶性肿瘤方面取得了巨大成功。然而,嵌合抗原受体 T(CAR-T)细胞疗法的生产仍然面临各种困难。自然杀伤(NK)-92 是一种可连续扩增的细胞系,为患者自身免疫细胞提供了有前途的替代方案。
我们通过共表达自然杀伤组 2 成员 D(NKG2D)和白细胞介素 21(IL-21)来构建 CAR-NK 细胞,并评估 NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK 细胞在体外和体内治疗肺癌的疗效。
我们的数据表明,IL-21 的表达以剂量依赖的方式有效增强了 NKG2D CAR-NK 细胞对肺癌细胞的细胞毒性,并抑制了体外和体内的肿瘤生长。此外,NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK 细胞的增殖增强,而这些细胞的凋亡和耗竭受到抑制。机制上,IL-21 通过激活 AKT 信号通路介导 NKG2D CAR-NK 细胞的功能。
我们的研究结果为使用 NKG2D-IL-21 CAR-NK 细胞疗法治疗肺癌提供了一种新的选择。