T-Cell Engineering For “off-The-shelf” Adoptive Immunotherapy

Adoptive T-cell therapies, where exogenous expression of a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) confers cancer recognition, have shown significant promise in initial clinical trials. However, present adoptive immunotherapy Methods are limited by the need for manipulation of autologous patient T-cells. To permit such an approach in an allogeneic context, Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALEN^TM) have been used to simultaneously inactivate the endogenous T cell receptor and CD52, a cellular target for a lymphodepleting treatment. This approach reduces the risk of GVHD while permitting proliferation and activity of the introduced T lymphocytes in the presence of the immunosuppressive drug alemtuzumab. Electroporation of primary T cells with mRNA coding for the appropriate TALEN^TM result in double knock-out (dKO) frequencies of up to 70%. Furthermore, functional characterization demonstrates that the dKO cells are resistant to complement dependent lysis or in vivo depletion by alemtuzumab, and show no apparent potential for TCR-mediated activation. Finally, endowing the dKO cells with a CD19 CAR supports their capacity to kill CD19+ tumor targets as efficiently as unedited T-cells both in vitro and in vivo.