Abstract 3574: Cytokine-autonomous, CAR-directed, off-the-shelf natural killer cells derived from a clonal engineered master pluripotent cell line
Authors: Lee Tom T. , Li Ye E. , Bjordahl Ryan , Blum Robert , Mahmood Sajid , Zhu Huang , Bonello Gregory B. , Valamehr Bahram , Kaufman Dan S. 
Published: August 2018

Natural killer (NK) cells are potent antitumor effectors that play an important role in innate and adaptive immunity. Despite recent clinical advances in the therapeutic use of NK cells, significant opportunities remain to harness their full potential in adoptive immunotherapy. For example, achieving consistent manufacturing of cancer immunotherapies using patient- and donor-sourced cells remains a significant challenge to delivering therapies to all patients who may benefit. There is also the need to improve the efficacy and persistence of adoptively transferred lymphocytes to promote favorable patient outcomes. We have previously demonstrated that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be genetically edited at the single-cell level and expanded to create clonal master engineered pluripotent cell lines, representing a renewable and reliable starting material for the creation of off-the-shelf (OTS) adoptive NK cell therapy. Using this unique platform, we evaluated the combination of NK cell-specific chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) with an autonomous protein to create a highly effective, persistent, and targeted NK cell therapy. The NK cell optimized CAR (NK-CAR) backbone contains the NKG2D transmembrane domain and the 2B4 co-stimulatory and the CD3ζ signaling domains to mediate a strong increase in NK cell signaling. To provide directed antitumor activity, anti-mesothelin (meso) and anti-CD19 scFvs were added to the NK-CAR backbone, and then engineered into the iPSC and subsequently differentiated to NK cells expressing NK-CARmeso or NK-CAR19. Using an ovarian cancer xenograft model in the initial study, a single dose of NK-CARmeso NK cells markedly inhibited tumor growth and mediated enhanced survival (84 days) compared to various controls, including NK cells harboring a 3rd-generation T-cell CAR construct with CD28 and 4-1BB costimulatory domains (p &lt; 0.002). We next engineered an IL-15RF fusion protein to provide self-stimulating signals to support NK cell function and persistence. The IL-15RF construct was created by fusing mature IL-15Rα to IL-15 at the C-terminus through a flexible linker. The design mimics the trans-presentation of IL-15 bound to IL-15Rα that is presented to IL-15Rβ/γC dimer to initiate signaling. While both iPSC-derived NK cells (iNKs) and iNKs bearing IL-15RF expanded in vitro in a similar manner in the presence of soluble IL-15 and IL-2 (2040- and 3615-fold expansion in 14 days, respectively), only the iNKs bearing IL-15RF significantly proliferated in the absence of cytokines (10- vs. 701-fold expansion in 14 days, respectively). We are currently investigating the combination of NK-CAR and IL-15RF to determine the potential synergy between the two modalities to create cytokine-autonomous, OTS NK cell cancer immunotherapies, including those that are CAR-targeted against solid and liquid tumors.

Citation Format: Tom T. Lee, Ye E. Li, Ryan Bjordahl, Robert Blum, Sajid Mahmood, Huang Zhu, Gregory B. Bonello, Bahram Valamehr, Dan S. Kaufman. Cytokine-autonomous, CAR-directed, off-the-shelf natural killer cells derived from a clonal engineered master pluripotent cell line [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3574.