[HTML][HTML] Efficient and non-genotoxic RNA-based engineering of human T cells using tumor-specific T cell receptors with minimal TCR mispairing

D Campillo-Davo, F Fujiki, JMJ Van den Bergh… - Frontiers in …, 2018 - frontiersin.org
D Campillo-Davo, F Fujiki, JMJ Van den Bergh, H De Reu, ELJM Smits, H Goossens…
Frontiers in immunology, 2018frontiersin.org
Genetic engineering of T cells with tumor specific T-cell receptors (TCR) is a promising
strategy to redirect their specificity against cancer cells in adoptive T cell therapy protocols.
Most studies are exploiting integrating retro-or lentiviral vectors to permanently introduce the
therapeutic TCR, which can pose serious safety issues when treatment-related toxicities
would occur. Therefore, we developed a versatile, non-genotoxic transfection method for
human unstimulated CD8+ T cells. We describe an optimized double sequential …
Genetic engineering of T cells with tumor specific T-cell receptors (TCR) is a promising strategy to redirect their specificity against cancer cells in adoptive T cell therapy protocols. Most studies are exploiting integrating retro- or lentiviral vectors to permanently introduce the therapeutic TCR, which can pose serious safety issues when treatment-related toxicities would occur. Therefore, we developed a versatile, non-genotoxic transfection method for human unstimulated CD8+ T cells. We describe an optimized double sequential electroporation platform whereby Dicer-substrate small interfering RNAs (DsiRNA) are first introduced to suppress endogenous TCR α and β expression, followed by electroporation with DsiRNA-resistant tumor-specific TCR mRNA. We demonstrate that double sequential electroporation of human primary unstimulated T cells with DsiRNA and TCR mRNA leads to unprecedented levels of transgene TCR expression due to a strongly reduced degree of TCR mispairing. Importantly, superior transgenic TCR expression boosts epitope-specific CD8+ T cell activation and killing activity. Altogether, DsiRNA and TCR mRNA double sequential electroporation is a rapid, non-integrating and highly efficient approach with an enhanced biosafety profile to engineer T cells with antigen-specific TCRs for use in early phase clinical trials.
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