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Cell therapy is an emerging therapy different from traditional drug therapy, among which immune cells and mesenchymal stem cells are the two types of most promising cells in the treatment of liver diseases at present, and preliminary results have been achieved for their therapeutic effects. This article summarizes the advances in cell therapy in the field of liver diseases, analyzes the challenges and coping strategies of different cell therapies, and discusses the application prospects of cell therapy in liver-related diseases.
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Tumor recurrence is one of the major life-threatening complications after liver transplantation for liver cancer. In addition to the common mechanisms underlying tumor recurrence, another unavoidable problem is that the immunosuppressive therapeutic regimen after transplantation could promote tumor recurrence and metastasis. Transplant oncology is an emerging field that addresses oncological challenges in transplantation. In this context, a comprehensive therapeutic management approach is required to balance the anti-tumor treatment and immunosuppressive status of recipients. Double-negative T cells (DNTs) are a cluster of heterogeneous cells mainly consisting of two subsets stratified by T cell receptor (TCR) type. Among them, TCRαβ+ DNTs are considered to induce immune suppression in immune-mediated diseases, while TCRγδ+ DNTs are widely recognized as tumor killers. As a composite cell therapy, healthy donor-derived DNTs can be propagated to therapeutic numbers in vitro and applied for the treatment of several malignancies without impairing normal tissues or being rejected by the host. In this work, we summarized the biological characteristics and functions of DNTs in oncology, immunology, and transplantation. Based on the multiple roles of DNTs, we propose that a new balance could be achieved in liver transplant oncology using them as an off-the-shelf adoptive cell therapy (ACT).
Subject(s)
Humans , T-Lymphocytes , Immunotherapy, Adoptive , Neoplasm Recurrence, Local , Transplantation, Homologous , Cell- and Tissue-Based TherapyABSTRACT
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most common tumors in digestive system, which is characterized by insidious clinical symptoms, strong invasion, easy metastasis and high mortality. In recent years, immunotherapy is a new direction to the treatment of solid tumors, but its applica-tion in pancreatic cancer is limited by tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer. The authors systematically analyze the tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer, summarize the clinical researches related to pancreatic cancer immunotherapy, and discuss the prospect of pancreatic cancer immunotherapy.
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Immune-based therapies have experienced a pronounced breakthrough in the past decades as they acquired multiple US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for various indications. To date, six chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies have been permitted for the treatment of certain patients with relapsed/refractory hematologic malignancies. However, several clinical trials of solid tumor CAR-T therapies were prematurely terminated, or they reported life-threatening treatment-related damages to healthy tissues. The simultaneous expression of target antigens by healthy organs and tumor cells is partly responsible for such toxicities. Alongside targeting tumor-specific antigens, targeting the aberrantly glycosylated glycoforms of tumor-associated antigens can also minimize the off-tumor effects of CAR-T therapies. Tn, T, and sialyl-Tn antigens have been reported to be involved in tumor progression and metastasis, and their expression results from the dysregulation of a series of glycosyltransferases and the endoplasmic reticulum protein chaperone, Cosmc. Moreover, these glycoforms have been associated with various types of cancers, including prostate, breast, colon, gastric, and lung cancers. Here, we discuss how underglycosylated antigens emerge and then detail the latest advances in the development of CAR-T-based immunotherapies that target some of such antigens.
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Antigens, Neoplasm/chemistry , Biomarkers, Tumor/metabolism , Glycosylation , Hematologic Neoplasms/drug therapy , Immunotherapy, Adoptive/methods , Neoplasm Recurrence, Local/metabolism , Receptors, Chimeric Antigen , T-Lymphocytes , United StatesABSTRACT
Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma has a high degree of malignancy and poor prognosis. Studies showed that there is a close relationship between the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma and the immune status in tumor microenvironment. Adoptive cell therapy showed anti-tumor effects and improve immunosuppression by infusing patients with activated specific immune cells, which become a central issue in tumor therapy and shown promising effects in the treatment of various malignant tumors, indicating great application potential. Adoptive cell therapy based on neoantigen may become a new hot spot in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, and their application, safety and effectiveness evaluation, efficacy prediction and assessment have become urgent issues to be solved. The purpose of this article is to introduce the progress related to adoptive cell therapy for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and elaborate the problems that need to be solved in the future.
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Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a category of highly heterogeneous and aggressive malignancy mainly originating from bile duct epithelial cells. The median survival time of untreated CCA patients is approximately 12?24 months, and the effectiveness and durability of surgical resection and neoadjuvant chemotherapy are limited. Results of the next-generation sequencing show that dysregulation of the immune system plays an important role in the pathogenesis of CCA. It has opened up new possibilities for the study of therapies targeting the natural course of aggressive CCA, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cell therapy, and tumor vaccines. Based on the current status of immunotherapy for CCA, the authors review the efficacy and dilemmas of current CCA immunotherapy strategies and look forward to the future treatment prospects of CCA.
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@#[Abstract] In recent years, tumor immunotherapy has developed rapidly, among which T-cell-based adoptive cell therapy has achieved certain clinical effect and become one of the most potential immunotherapeutics. T cell infiltration mainly includes rolling, adhesion, extravasation and chemotaxis etc. However, there are physical barriers, chemokine mismatch, vascular abnormalities, immunosuppressive microenvironment and other factors that limit the efficacy of adoptive cell therapy. The homing ability of T cells can be further improved by optimizing the chemokine receptor on the cell surface, inserting targeted peptide, improving the way of administration, and adopting combined treatment of radiotherapy, immune checkpoint blocker, tumor vaccine and bispecific antibody, etc. This review mainly summarizes the process of T cell infiltration, the influencing factors of T cell targeting tumor site and the relevant treatment strategies, as well as gives a prospection for future research.
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Objective:To investigate the ability of the anti-PD-1(scFv)/hIL-15 fusion protein(PD-15) to specifically bind to PD-1 in vitro and the effect of the combination of PD-15 with GF-hIL-15Ra-K562(G15Ra-K562) feeder cells to expand NK/T cells. Methods:Overlap PCR was used to construct G15Ra expression vector. pMXs-G15Ra-IP was transfected into K562 by electroporation. G15Ra-K562 feeder cell lines were obtained by limiting dilution method. pUC57-PD-15 was constructed by digestion and ligation. Lipofectamine? 2000 was used to transiently transfect pUC57-PD-15 into HEK293T cells and the conditioned medium containing PD-15 fusion protein was obtained. Density gradient centrifugation was used to obtain human peripheral blood mononuclear lymphocytes(PBMC), and CFSE staining was used to mark active proliferating cells. Flow cytometry was used to detect the ability of PD-15 to specifically bind to PD-1 and its effect on the proliferation of human PBMC and the proportion of different subpopulations of lymphocytes.Results:The feeder cells G15Ra-K562 with high expression of fusion protein G15Ra was successfully constructed. The addition of hIL-15 can increase the ability of G15Ra-K562 to expand human PBMC by more than 5 times( P<0.05). PD-15 fusion protein has PD-1 specific binding ability( P<0.001), combined with G15Ra-K562 can efficiently expand human peripheral blood-derived NK/T cells in vitro( P<0.05). The cells expanded by PD-15 and G15Ra-K562 are mainly natural killing cell, CD8 + T and CD4 + T cells. Conclusions:The PD-15 fusion protein can specifically target the PD-1 molecule and has a strong human peripheral blood-derived NK/T cell expansion ability when combined with G15Ra-K562 feeder cells. These results shed light on selective expansion of PD-1 + lymphocytes in vitro.
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Neuroblastoma(NB)is one of the most common malignant tumors in children.The prognosis of patients with high-risk NB remains poor despite intensive multimodal treatments including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.Recently, with good therapy results in hematological malignant tumors, more attention has been paid to immunotherapy for solid tumors such as NB.However, the efficacy of immunotherapy for NB is not as good as that for other hematological malignancies, which may be related to the complex tumor microenvironment(TME)of solid tumors.In order to better understand the direction and future application of immunotherapy in NB, we review TME and current immunotherapy for NB.
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Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is an emerging powerful cancer immunotherapy, which includes a complex process of genetic modification, stimulation and expansion. During these
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@#Objective: To investigate the function of anti-PD-1 (scFv)/IL-15/IL-15Rα-sushi fusion protein (PD-S15) to specifically bind to PD-1 in vitro and to explore its effect on NK/T cell proliferation. Methods: The human anti-PD-1 (scFv) gene sequence and human IL-15/IL-15Rα-sushi fusion gene sequence were synthesized chemically. The recombinant expression plasmid pUC57-PD-S15 was constructed by enzyme digestion and ligation of the two target genes, and then transiently transfected into HEK293T cells by lipofectamineTM 2000. The supernatants of cell culture medium were acquired, and the expression of PD-S15 fusion protein in cell culture supernatants was detected by Wb assay. PBMCs and TILs were cultured in mediums with different proportion of PD-S15/X-VIVOTM15, respectively. Then, the capacity of PD-S15 fusion protein to bind to PD-1 in vitro and its effect on the proliferation of PBMCs and the proportion of CD3+CD8+, CD3+CD4+ and CD3-CD56+ subsets were detected by flow cytometry. The effect of PD-S15 fusion protein on the proliferation of TILs was detected by cytometry. Results: The successful construction of pUC57-PD-S15 eukaryotic expression plasmid was confirmed by double enzyme digestion and sequencing, and then successfully transfected into HEK293T cells. The relative molecular weight of the target protein was approximately 55 000, and was in line with expectations. PD-S15 fusion protein could specifically combine with PD-1 in vitro (P<0.05) and stimulate NK/T cell proliferation (P<0.05). Compared with classical TILs culture method, the efficiency of activation and amplification of T cells in vitro by PD-S15 culturemethodwasbetter (P<0.01). Conclusion: PD-S15 fusion protein can specifically target PD-1 and rapidly expand NK/T cells in vitro, which lays a foundation for the selective expansion of CD8+PD-1+ antigen-specific T lymphocytes from tumor tissues and even peripheral blood.
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Systemic target therapeutic drugs, such as sorafenib, lenvatinib, or regorafenib are the only drugs that are known to be effective against advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, these agents show a limited efficacy in killing residual tumors. Immunotherapy is an alternative approach to this treatment and has been used to successfully treat different cancers, including HCC. HCC is an inflammation-induced cancer and represents a very interesting target for immunotherapeutics. Immunotherapies aim to reverse the immune tolerance and suppression found in tumor microenvironments and include approaches, such as adoptive cell therapy, immune checkpoint inhibition, and cancer vaccination. Adoptive cell therapy uses autologous natural killer or cytokine-induced killer cells by cultivating them ex vivo and subsequently reinfusing them into the patient. Immune checkpoint inhibitors reactivate tumor-specific T cells by suppressing checkpoint-mediated inhibitory signaling. Cancer vaccination induces a tumor-specific immune response by activating effector T lymphocytes. A wide range of potential immunotherapy-related adverse events occur; therefore, a multidisciplinary collaborative management is required across the clinical spectrum. This review summarizes the current status of immunotherapy for HCC and provides a perspective on its future applications.
Subject(s)
Humans , Carcinoma, Hepatocellular , Cell- and Tissue-Based Therapy , Cytokine-Induced Killer Cells , Homicide , Immune Tolerance , Immunotherapy , Neoplasm, Residual , Oncolytic Viruses , T-Lymphocytes , Tumor Microenvironment , VaccinationABSTRACT
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) is a recombinant immunoreceptor combining an antibody-derived targeting fragment with signaling domains capable of activating cells, which endows T cells with the ability to recognize tumor-associated surface antigens independent of the expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules. Recent early-phase clinical trials of CAR-modified T (CAR-T) cells for relapsed or refractory B cell malignancies have demonstrated promising results (that is, anti-CD19 CAR-T in B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL)). Given this success, broadening the clinical experience of CAR-T cell therapy beyond hematological malignancies has been actively investigated. Here we discuss the basic design of CAR and review the clinical results from the studies of CAR-T cells in B cell leukemia and lymphoma, and several solid tumors. We additionally discuss the major challenges in the further development and strategies for increasing anti-tumor activity and safety, as well as for successful commercial translation.
Subject(s)
Animals , Humans , Immunity, Cellular , Immunotherapy , Precursor B-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma , Allergy and Immunology , Pathology , Therapeutics , Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell , Allergy and Immunology , Recombinant Fusion Proteins , Allergy and Immunology , T-Lymphocytes , Allergy and Immunology , TransplantationABSTRACT
Colorectal cancer is one of the common malignant tumors and the overall prognosis is poor. The search for a more effective treatment for colorectal cancer has never stopped. The current interaction between the modulated immune system and the tumor microenvironment is a hot topic in the treatment of colorectal cancer. The achievements involve immune checkpoint inhibition, cytokine therapy, toll?like receptors and autologous cell therapy. It has been proved that these methods have mild effect on tumor loading reduction. However, significant breakthrough has been achieved with the use of checkpoint inhibitors targeting cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen?4 (CTLA?4),programmed death?1 (PD?1) and programmed death receptor ligand 1 (PD?L1). Immunotherapy is promising in the treatment of patients with refractory tumors. The success of this current immunotherapy approach is largely limited to tumors with high mutation amplification, such as melanoma,renal cell carcinoma ( RCC) and non?small cell lung cancer. However,this discovery has led the development of checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of colorectal cancer with highly mutated amplification of mismatch repair gene to a new era.