Chimeric antigen receptor-modified human regulatory T cells that constitutively express IL-10 maintain their phenotype and are potently suppressive

Yasmin R. Mohseni, Adeel Saleem, Sim L. Tung, Caroline Dudreuilh, Cameron Lang, Qi Peng, Alessia Volpe, George Adigbli, Amy Cross, Joanna Hester, Farzin Farzaneh, Cristiano Scotta, Robert I. Lechler, Fadi Issa*, Gilbert O. Fruhwirth, Giovanna Lombardi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Clinical trials of Treg therapy in transplantation are currently entering phases IIa and IIb, with the majority of these employing polyclonal Treg populations that harbor a broad specificity. Enhancing Treg specificity is possible with the use of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), which can be customized to respond to a specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA). In this study, we build on our previous work in the development of HLA-A2 CAR-Tregs by further equipping cells with the constitutive expression of interleukin 10 (IL-10) and an imaging reporter as additional payloads. Cells were engineered to express combinations of these domains and assessed for phenotype and function. Cells expressing the full construct maintained a stable phenotype after transduction, were specifically activated by HLA-A2, and suppressed alloresponses potently. The addition of IL-10 provided an additional advantage to suppressive capacity. This study therefore provides an important proof-of-principle for this cell engineering approach for next-generation Treg therapy in transplantation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2522-2530
Number of pages9
JournalEuropean Journal of Immunology
Volume51
Issue number10
Early online date8 Aug 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2021

Keywords

  • Cell therapy
  • Chimeric antigen receptor
  • IL-10
  • Regulatory T cell
  • Suppression

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