Immune Cell Engineering: Revolutionizing Cancer Immunotherapy

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Conventional treatments like chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery have limitations and are not always effective. In recent years, cancer immunotherapy has emerged as a powerful new treatment approach that harnesses the patient's own immune system to fight cancer. One promising area of cancer immunotherapy research is immune cell engineering. This new field combines immunology and synthetic biology to engineer immune cells like T cells and natural killer (NK) cells with enhanced properties to recognize and destroy cancer cells more effectively.

Adoptive Cell Transfer Therapy

Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) therapy is a type of cancer immunotherapy where immune cells are collected from the patient or donor, engineered or activated in the laboratory, and transferred back into the patient to induce an anti-tumor immune response. In ACT, T cells or NK cells are genetically modified using viral or non-viral vectors to express molecules called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on their surface. CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies redirect the immune cells to recognize and attack cancer cells based on the target antigen expressed on tumor cells, independent of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) presentation.

Studies have shown remarkable responses using CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies targeting the CD19 antigen on B cell malignancies like ALL and NHL. CAR-T cell therapies such as Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) have been approved by the FDA for some types of leukemia and lymphoma. However, CAR technologies face challenges in solid tumors due to heterogeneous antigen expression, immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, and on-target off-tumor toxicity. Researchers are engineering next-generation CARs and advanced cell therapies to overcome these obstacles.

Pre-activation and Costimulation

During adoptive cell transfer, the extended culturing and harvesting procedures can lead to an exhausted phenotype in the Immune Cell Engineering. Researchers are exploring modified culture techniques and pre-activation steps to generate immune cells with enhanced proliferative capacity, persistence, and anti-tumor efficacy. For example, T cells are being engineered to express additional costimulatory receptors like 4-1BB, OX40, or ICOS along with the CAR to provide strong activation signals and improve cell fitness upon antigen engagement. CAR-T cells equipped with such costimulatory domains have shown better in vivo persistence and anti-tumor function in some malignancies.

Co-stimulatory molecules engineered onto NK cells are also intended to boost NK cell activation, proliferation, and survival through endogenous costimulatory pathways. Pre-activated and costimulated CAR-NK cells may overcome some limitations of CAR-T cells like shorter persistence and lower toxicity risk. Combinations of pre-conditioning, costimulation, and checkpoint blockade hold promise to generate more potent "turbocharged" immune cell therapies.

Improving Trafficking and Migration

Once administered to cancer patients, engineered T cells and NK cells must efficiently traffic and infiltrate the tumor sites to exert their anti-tumor action. However, solid tumors often create physical, biochemical, and cellular barriers that impair immune cell trafficking. Immune cell engineering approaches are being explored to enhance tumor localization through the expression of chemokine receptors or ligand traps.

For example, CAR-T cells have been genetically modified to express CXCR2 or CCR2/CCR5 chemokine receptors to promote migration towards chemokines secreted in the tumor microenvironment. By incorporating these trafficking modifications, researchers hope to improve tumor infiltration and anti-tumor effects compared to traditional CAR-T cell therapies for solid cancers. Emerging technologies like genome-wide CRISPR screens are also being utilized to identify novel genes that direct efficient migration and infiltration into solid tumors.

Overcoming the Immune-Excluded Phenotype

Recent studies revealed that tumors can develop an "immune-excluded" or "cold" phenotype where immune cells are physically separated or compressed at the tumor margin instead of infiltrating deep inside. This immune-excluded phenotype prevents effective immune cell penetration and contributes to therapeutic resistance. Immune cell engineering approaches aim to overcome these physical barriers through the expression of matrix-modifying enzymes.

For example, CAR-T cells have been modified to secrete matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) like MMP9 to break down extracellular matrix components and facilitate immune cell infiltration. Other strategies involve engineering T cells or NK cells with activating signals to induce endothelial cell retraction and open up the tumor vasculature for enhanced trafficking. These barrier-penetrating technologies may revive the efficacy of adoptive immunotherapy for solid tumors previously considered non-responsive due to immune exclusion.

Improving Persistence and Proliferation

To exert durable anti-tumor effects, engineered immune cells need to persist, proliferate, and survive long-term inside the patient's body. However, adoptively transferred CAR-T and CAR-NK cells often exhibit limited persistence, especially in solid tumors lacking the cognate antigen. Therefore, engineering strategies aim to enhance cell proliferation, survival and memory potential through additional genetic modifications.

One approach involves incorporating cytokine genes like IL-15, IL-21 or membrane-bound IL-15/IL-15Rα complexes to provide homeostatic proliferation signals and mimic the behavior of long-lived memory T cells. Other technologies integrate genes important for memory T cell formation like BCL-6, TCF1/LEF1, STAT3/5 or microRNAs to induce stem-like qualities into the engineered CAR cells. By combining pre-conditioning methods and checkpoint blockade therapies, researchers envision generating "living drugs" with durable remissions even after the initial infused CAR cells decline. Overall, these persistence-enhancement strategies hold promise to extend the clinical benefits of CAR therapies.

Get more insights on Immune Cell Engineering

Also Read Related Article on Digital Trust