Retroviral transduction of protein kinase C-gamma into tumor-specific T cells allows antigen-independent long-term growth in IL-2 with retention of functional specificity in vitro and ability to mediate tumor therapy in vivo.

The aim of our study was to examine the potential usefulness of transducing the protein kinase C-gamma (PKC-gamma) cDNA gene into tumor-specific T cells as a technique for facilitating the generation of large numbers of functional Ag-specific T for tumor therapy. Murine CD8+, F-MuLV gag-specific CTL clones, and CD4+, F-MuLV env-specific Th clones, as well as bulk-cultured T cell lines with defined Ag specificity to FBL-3, a Friend murine leukemia virus (F-MuLV)-induced tumor, were transduced with a retroviral vector pZipNeoPKC-gamma and selected in G418. The results demonstrated that PKC-gamma-transduced clones remained activated in culture, as evidenced by continued expression of up-regulated levels of IL-2R, which were as high after 6 mo in culture without Ag restimulation as 24 h after Ag stimulation. In vitro functional studies demonstrated that PKC-gamma-transduced CD8+ T cell clones maintained specific cytolytic activity to FBL-3, and PKC-gamma-transduced CD4+ T cell clones maintained specific proliferative activity to FBL-3 or F-MuLV Ag presented by irradiated syngeneic APC. Short-term bulk-cultured T cells specific to FBL-3 were also transduced and could be grown long term in vitro with maintenance of functional specificity. In vivo study showed that PKC-gamma-transduced CD4+ T cells were able to proliferate in response to Ag plus IL-2 stimulation in vivo in a similar pattern as the parental T cells. Therapy with adoptively transferred PKC-gamma-transduced T cell clones and lines into syngeneic mice, with or without FBL-3 tumor, showed that the PKC-gamma-transduced T cells were not tumorigenic and were effective in curing mice with disseminated FBL-3.