Project description:Anti-cancer immunotherapy approaches are increasingly coveted. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for hematological tumors, but the treatment of solid tumors still lacks effectiveness, due to lower intra-tumor infiltration of CAR-T cells and tumor-induced immunosuppression. Macrophages represent a very large proportion of the tumor environment, participate in many aspects to tumor development and therefore represent interesting therapeutic targets. Macrophages can infiltrate solid tumor tissue and interact with almost all cellular components in the tumor microenvironment. In addition, macrophages can also promote a direct anti-tumor response by phagocyting tumor cells. We have developed macrophages expressing a CAR receptor against the HER2 antigen. The CAR receptor possesses an intracellular domain CD3ζ having homology with the protein FcεRI-γ, which once activated by the recognition antibody-antigen, induces the phagocytic activity of macrophages. 72% of macrophages express the CAR after transduction. CAR-M can specifically phagocyte HER2 coated-beads in a much more effective way than WT macrophages. We have then confirmed the capacity of CAR-M to phagocyte HER2+ cancer cell lines. Co-culture of CAR-M with breast cancer tumoroids (HER2+ or HER2-) has also been performed demonstrating their efficacy in a more complex environment. However, in the tumor microenvironment, due to their plasticity, macrophages tend to adopt an anti-inflammatory phenotype losing their anti-tumor activities. We have therefore developed a combined strategy by inhibiting two proprotein convertases, Furin and PC1/3 in CAR-M. The inhibition of furin or PC1/3 induces an increase in pro-inflammatory markers and maintains macrophage activation in the presence of cancer cells. In addition, HER2+ CAR-M with shFurin or shPC1/3 greatly increases the phagocytic activity on Her2+ beads or Her2+ tumors. These enzymes are therefore phenotypic regulators of macrophages. Our strategy is therefore based on a double activation of tumor-infiltrating macrophages. The first one consists in boosting the phagocytic activity of macrophages by having them express a CAR receptor targeting a tumor antigen. The second allows their reprogramming towards a pro- inflammatory phenotype by the inhibition of Furin and/or PC1/3 proprotein convertases
Project description:Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) therapy has not yet been fully explored in solid tumors. Human epidermal growth factor receptor-2(HER2) is widely expressed in cancers. Investigators have developed anti-HER2 CAR-modified T cells and validated the efficiency targeting HER2-positive cancer in preclinical studies. This study is aimed to confirm its adverse effects including cytokine storm response and any other adverse effects. In addition, CAR-T cells persistence, tumor elimination and disease status after treatment will be evaluated.
Project description:Markers predicting response and resistance to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma are currently missing. We subjected cells isolated from peripheral blood and bone marrow before and after the application of CAR T cells directed against B cell maturation antigen to single cell multi-omic analyses to identify markers associated with resistance and early relapse.
Project description:Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has shown promise in treating hematologic malignancies. However, it is limited to individualized cell therapy and faces challenges, including high costs, extended preparation time, and limited efficacy against solid tumors. Here, we generated circular RNAs (circRNAs) encoding Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) transmembrane proteins, referred to as circRNACAR, which mediated remarkable tumor killing in both T cells and macrophages. In addition, macrophages exhibited efficient phagocytosis of tumor cells and pro-inflammatory polarization induced by circRNACAR in vitro. We demonstrated that circRNACAR, delivered with immunocyte-tropic lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), significantly inhibited tumor growth, improved survival rates and induced a pro-inflammatory tumor microenvironment in mice. Importantly, the combination of circRNAAnti-HER2-CAR and circRNA-based cancer vaccines encoding the corresponding transmembrane HER2 antigen, termed circRNAHER2, exhibited synergistically enhanced anti-tumor activity. Notably, we found that circRNACAR could boost the level of circRNAHER2-elicited antibodies, which could mediate effective killing of HER2+ tumor cells by macrophages, indicating the potential of vaccination-elicited antibodies in developing novel immunotherapy. This proof-of-concept study demonstrated that the combination of circRNA-based in vivo CAR and vaccines, termed in vivo CAR-VAC, holds the potential to become an upgraded off-the-shelf immunotherapy, and also sheds light on the huge potential of vaccination-elicited antibodies in cancer immunotherapy.
Project description:Resistance to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy develops through multiple mechanisms including antigen-loss escape and tumor-induced immune suppression. Expression of multiple CARs may overcome multi-antigen-loss escape. Similarly, expression of switch receptors that convert inhibitory immune checkpoint signals into positive costimulatory signals may enhance CAR T cell activity in the tumor microenvironment. Engineering multiple features into one cell product, however, is limited by transgene packaging constraints of current vector systems. Here, we describe a leucine zipper-based cell sorting methodology that enables selective single-step immunomagnetic purification of cells co-transduced with two vectors, designed to potentially double the number of incorporated transgenes. This “Zip-sorting” system facilitated generation of T cells simultaneously expressing up to four CARs and co-expressing up to three switch receptors. These multi-CAR multi-Switch receptor arrays enabled T cells to eliminate antigenically heterogeneous syngeneic leukemia populations co-expressing multiple inhibitory ligands. Zip-sorted multi-CAR multi-Switch receptor T cells represent a combinatorial therapeutic strategy to overcome multiple mechanisms of CAR T cell resistance.
Project description:This ordinary differential equation model of the cellular kinetics and pharmacodynamics of CAR-T cell therapy is described in the publication:
Chaudhury, A., Zhu, X., Chu, L., Goliaei, A., June, C., Kearns, J. and Stein, A., 2020. Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapies: A Review of Cellular Kinetic‐Pharmacodynamic Modeling Approaches. The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 60(S1).
DOI: 10.1002/jcph.1691
Comment:
This model is based on equations 4-5 from the manuscript.
Abstract:
Chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T cell) therapies have shown significant efficacy in CD19+ leukemias and lymphomas. There remain many challenges and questions for improving next-generation CAR-T cell therapies, and mathematical modeling of CAR-T cells may play a role in supporting further development. In this review, we introduce a mathematical modeling taxonomy for a set of relatively simple cellular kinetic-pharmacodynamic models that describe the in vivo dynamics of CAR-T cell and their interactions with cancer cells. We then discuss potential extensions of this model to include target binding, tumor distribution, cytokine-release syndrome, immunophenotype differentiation, and genotypic heterogeneity.
Project description:This ordinary differential equation model of the cellular kinetics and pharmacodynamics of CAR-T cell therapy is described in the publication:
Chaudhury, A., Zhu, X., Chu, L., Goliaei, A., June, C., Kearns, J. and Stein, A., 2020. Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapies: A Review of Cellular Kinetic‐Pharmacodynamic Modeling Approaches. The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 60(S1).
DOI: 10.1002/jcph.1691
Comment:
This model is based on equations 7-9 from the manuscript.
Abstract:
Chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T cell) therapies have shown significant efficacy in CD19+ leukemias and lymphomas. There remain many challenges and questions for improving next-generation CAR-T cell therapies, and mathematical modeling of CAR-T cells may play a role in supporting further development. In this review, we introduce a mathematical modeling taxonomy for a set of relatively simple cellular kinetic-pharmacodynamic models that describe the in vivo dynamics of CAR-T cell and their interactions with cancer cells. We then discuss potential extensions of this model to include target binding, tumor distribution, cytokine-release syndrome, immunophenotype differentiation, and genotypic heterogeneity.
Project description:Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy targeting human CD19 have demonstrated clinical efficacy against B-cell malignancies. However, CAR-T cell therapy's efficacy against solid tumors is limited due to factors like low tumor-associated antigens, infiltration rate, and T cell exhaustion. We have shown that deleting NR4a genes in CAR-T cells prevents T cell exhaustion and improved their therapeutic effects on solid tumors in a mouse model. To further explore this for human, we deleted all three NR4a family factors in CAR-T cells that recognize Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor type 2 (HER2) using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. These modified CAR-T cells (NR4a-TKO CAR-T) exhibited resistance to exhaustion, increased tumor-killing activity, and higher efficacy in tumor regression and survival rate in a human lung carcinoma model in mice. The enhanced therapeutic effects were associated with increased cytokine expression, reduced exhaustion-related gene expression, and improved persistence within tumors. We propose that targeting NR4a could be a promising strategy for developing superior CAR-T cells against solid tumors.
Project description:BCMA targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy have shown deep and durable responses in multiple myeloma. However, relapse following therapy is frequently observed, and mechanisms of resistance remain ill-defined. We performed single cell genomic characterization of longitudinal samples from a patient who relapsed after initial CAR T cell treatment with lack of response to retreatment.