Mol Ther Nucleic Acids. 2013;2:e114. doi: 10.1038/mtna.2013.43. Epub 2016 Dec 13.
A Practical Approach to Immunotherapy of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Using T Cells Redirected Against Hepatitis B Virus.Koh S1, Shimasaki N2, Suwanarusk R3, Ho ZZ4, Chia A4, Banu N4, Wu Howland S3, Ong AS3, Gehring AJ5, Stauss H6, Renia L3, Sällberg M7, Campana D2, Bertoletti A8.
Author information
- 1Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, (A*STAR), Singapore; Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Clinical Microbiology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
- 2Department of Paediatrics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
- 3Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
- 4Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, (A*STAR), Singapore.
- 5Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Saint Louis University Medical Center, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
- 6Department of Immunology, Royal Free Hospital, London, UK.
- 7Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Clinical Microbiology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
- 8Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, (A*STAR), Singapore; Emerging Infectious Diseases Program, Duke NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore. Electronic address: [email protected].
AbstractHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells often have hepatitis B virus (HBV)-DNA integration and can be targeted by HBV-specific T cells. The use of viral vectors to introduce exogenous HBV-specific T-cell receptors (TCR) on T cells to redirect their specificity is complex and expensive to implement in clinical trials. Moreover, it raises safety concerns related to insertional mutagenesis and potential toxicity of long-lived HBV-specific T cells in patients with persistent infection. To develop a more practical and safer approach to cell therapy of HCC, we used electroporation of mRNA encoding anti-HBV TCR. Approximately 80% of CD8+ T cells expressed functional HBV TCR 24 hours postelectroporation, an expression efficiency much higher than that obtained by retroviral transduction (~18%). Antigen-specific cytokine production of electroporated T cells was efficient within 72-hour period, after which the redirected T cells lost their HBV-specific function. Despite this transient functionality, the TCR-electroporated T cells efficiently prevented tumor seeding and suppressed the growth of established tumors in a xenograft model of HCC. Finally, we established a method for large-scale TCR mRNA electroporation that yielded large numbers of highly functional clinical-grade anti-HBV T cells. This method represents a practical approach to cell therapy of HCC and its inherently self-limiting toxicity suggests potential for application in other HBV-related pathologies.
Molecular Therapy-Nucleic Acids is an open-access journal published by Nature Publishing Group. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.
KEYWORDS: TCR gene therapy; hepatitis B virus; hepatocellular carcinoma; mRNA electroporation
PMID:28173945DOI:10.1038/mtna.2013.43
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