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NK cells engineered with a IL-15/IL-15Rα complex and CD19-targeted CAR show in vitro expansion and tumor regression in a murine xenograft model of B-cell leukemia in vivo

ABSTRACT: Natural killer (NK) cells are an attractive therapeutic approach as alternative chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) carriers and unlike T cells, offer their use in allogeneic settings. The translation of NK cells into the clinic is still hampered by the inability of CAR-NK cells to expand in vitro and in vivo. Adoptive transfer of CAR-NK cells holds the promise of therapeutic benefit with a lower rate of adverse events due to the absence of GvHD and cytokine release syndrome. However, adoptive transfer of CAR-NK cells has not yet achieved breakthrough clinical results, and further improvement of CAR-NK cells is necessary. Here, we demonstrated that a fourth-generation CD19-targeted CAR (CAR.19) co-expressing IL-15 linked to its receptor IL-15/IL-15Rα (CAR.19-IL-15/IL-15Rα) significantly enhanced NK-92 cell proliferation, proinflammatory cytokine secretion, and cytotoxic activity against B-cell cancer cell lines in vitro and in a xenograft mouse model. Surprisingly, CAR construct comprising the IL-15/IL-15Rα was superior to CAR co-expressing the soluble form of IL-15 in terms of sustained proliferation, viability, but importantly also in their ability to control CD19+ B-cell lymphoma in a murine xenograft model. Together with the results of the systematic analysis of the transcriptome of activated NK-92 CAR variants, this supports the notion that IL-15/IL-15Rα comprising fourth-generation CARs may overcome the limitations of NK cell-based targeted tumor therapies in vivo by providing the necessary growth and activation signals

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE234733 | GEO | 2023/08/29

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Treatment of hematological malignancies by adoptive transfer of activated natural killer (NK) cells is limited by poor post-infusion persistence. We compared the ability of interleukin-2 (IL-2) and IL-15 to sustain human NK cell functions following cytokine withdrawal to model post-infusion performance. In contrasts to IL-2, IL-15 mediated stronger signaling through the IL-2/15 receptor complex and provided functional advantages. Genome-wide analysis of cytosolic and polysome-associated mRNA revealed cytokine dependent differential mRNA levels and translation during cytokine activation but also that most gene expression differences were primed by IL-15 and only manifested after cytokine withdrawal. IL-15 augmented mTOR signaling, which correlated with increased expression of genes related to cell metabolism and respiration. Consistently, mTOR inhibition abrogated IL-15-induced functional advantages. Moreover, mTOR-independent STAT-5 signaling contributed to improved NK cell function during cytokine activation but not following cytokine withdrawal. The superior performance of IL-15 stimulated NK cells was also observed using a clinically applicable protocol for NK cell expansion. Finally, expression of IL-15 correlated with cytolytic immune functions in patients with B cell lymphoma and favorable clinical outcome. These findings highlight the importance of mTOR regulated metabolic processes for immune cell functions and argue for implementation of IL-15 in adoptive NK cell cancer therapy. Freshly isolated NK cells from 6 donors were activated with IL-2 or IL-15 for 48 hours, followed by cytokine withdrawal for 24 hours, resulting in four RNA samples per donor. From each sample, both the cytosolic as well as the polysomal fraction were collected. Donor 3 contains activation and post withdrawal data from two different donors due to poor RNA-quality obtained for some samples which did not allow for processing of the complete set of 6 donors (resulting in a total of 40 samples).

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NK cells engineered with a IL-15/IL-15Rα complex and CD19-targeted CAR show in vitro expansion and tumor regression in a murine xenograft model of B-cell leukemia in vivo

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