Isolation of therapeutic cells and framework for adoptive cell therapies based around stem-like chronic memory CD8 T cells that may be paired with PD-1 blockade.
Adoptive Cell Therapies, also known as cellular immunotherapy, is a form of treatment that uses the cells of our immune system to eliminate cancer. CD8-positive T cells are mediators of adaptive immunity and include cytotoxic T cells, which are important for killing cancerous or virally infected cells. Researchers revealed a subset of stem-like chronic memory CD8 T cells and experiments suggest that these cells can be isolated and utilized or engineered in their liking for adoptive cell therapies for cancer, chronic viral infection, and/or other chronic diseases with better efficacy than other CD8 T cells.
Researchers at Emory have developed a series of experiments which reveal a subset of stem-like CD8 T cells which persist through during chronic viral infection and differentiate into the stem-like chronic memory cells which have adapted to survive long term after antigen clearance. Researchers concluded that the persistent chronic memory T cells resemble the self-renewing stem-like cells found during chronic viral infection, autoimmunity, and cancer. The researcher’s proposal suggests that these cells can be isolated and utilized or engineered in their liking for adoptive cell therapies for cancer, chronic viral infection, and/or other chronic diseases with better efficacy than other CD8 T cells. They further propose that pairing these cells with PD-1 blockade agents would significantly bolster the effector differentiation of these transferred cells and improve the efficacy of the overall immune therapy.