IL-12 Reprograms CAR-Expressing Natural Killer T cells to Long-Lived TH1-Polarized Cells with Potent Antitumor Activity
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ABSTRACT: Human natural killer T cells (NKTs) are innate-like T lymphocytes that are increasingly used for cancer immunotherapy. Here we show that human NKTs expressing the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12) undergo extensive and sustained molecular and functional reprogramming. Specifically, IL-12 instructs and maintain a Th1-polarization program in NKTs in vivo without causing their functional exhaustion. Furthermore, using CD62L as a marker of memory cells in human NKTs, we observed that IL-12 maintains long-term CD62L-expressing memory NKTs in vivo. Notably, IL-12 initiates de novo programming of memory NKTs in CD62L negative NKTs indicating that human NKTs circulating in the peripheral blood possess an intrinsic differentiation hierarchy and that IL-12 plays a role in promoting their differentiation to long-lived Th1-polarized memory cells. Human NKTs engineered to co-express a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) coupled with the expression of IL-12 showed enhanced antitumor activity in tumor models, persisted long-term in vivo and conserved the molecular signature driven by the IL-12 expression. Thus IL-12 reveals an intrinsic and unappreciated plasticity of peripheral human NKTs that may play a crucial role in the development of cell therapeutics.
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE241586 | GEO | 2023/11/30
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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