Poster Presentation The Australasian Society for Immunology 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting

Nanoscale bead-based tetramer enrichment and in vitro stimulation results in rapid antigen-specific CD8+ T cell expansion (#244)

Carl Haupt 1 2 , Lillian Neal 1 , Jonathan Schneck 2 , Chrystal Paulos 1 3 , Juan Varela 1 4
  1. Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
  2. Pathology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
  3. Microbiology and Immunology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
  4. Hematology and Oncology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Broad application of adoptive cell transfer of tumor-specific T cells for the treatment of cancer has been limited. This is mainly due to the high cost and labor-intensive methods required to successfully generate autologous antigen-specific CD8+ T cells. Here, we report on a modified application of a novel nanoparticle-based method for expansion of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells from normal human donors. This Enrichment + Expansion (E+E) strategy uses paramagnetic, nanoscale artificial Antigen Presenting Cells (aAPC) to rapidly generate large numbers of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells from naïve precursors. Nano-aAPC are capable of enriching tumor-specific CD8+ T cells in a magnetic column and subsequently activating them to induce expansion.

  1. Perica, K et al. Enrichment and expansion with nanoscale artificial antigen presenting cells for adoptive immunotherapy. ACS Nano. 9(7):6861-71. (2015).