Large-scale Isolation of Highly Pure "Untouched" Regulatory T Cells in a GMP Environment for Adoptive Cell Therapy.

Adoptive cell therapy is an emerging treatment strategy for a number of serious diseases. Regulatory T (Treg) cells represent 1 cell type of particular interest for therapy of inflammatory conditions, as they are responsible for controlling unwanted immune responses. Initial clinical trials of adoptive transfer of Treg cells in patients with graft-versus-host disease were shown to be safe.

The road to memory: an early rest for the long journey.

Central memory T lymphocytes were reported to develop after acute but not chronic infection, which prompted this feasibility study on generating long-term CD8 T cells ex vivo, by applying a culture condition that simulates an acute infection. During 35 d of culture, naive T cells (CD45RA(+), CD127(+), CCR7(+), CD62L(+), CXCR3(+)) first developed into effector T cells (CD45RA(+/-), CD127(+/-), CCR7(+/-), CD62L(+), CXCR3(+)), followed by three intermediate stages: intermediate T cells 1 (CD45RO(+), CD127(+/-), CCR7(+), CD62L(+), CXCR3(+)), intermediate T cells 2 (CD45RO(+), CD127(-), CCR7(-), CD62L(+), CXCR3(+)), and intermediate T cells 3 (CD45RO(+/-), CD127(+), CCR7(+), CD62L(-), CXCR3(+)) before reverting to stable CD45RA(+) central memory T cells (CD45RA(+), CD127(+), CCR7(+), CD62L(+), CXCR3(+)). If both anti-CD3 and the inflammatory milieu persisted beyond day 10, intermediate T cells 2 gradually developed into effector memory T cells (CD45RO(+), CD127(-), CCR7(-), CD62L(-), CXCR3(+)).

Emerging natural killer cell immunotherapies: large-scale ex vivo production of highly potent anticancer effectors.

Natural killer (NK) cell therapies are emerging worldwide as promising anticancer treatments, exploiting the fast cytolytic action of NK effectors and their potentially broad applicability against a wide range of malignancies. Until recently, clinical protocols have mainly involved freshly isolated NK cells or short- term activated NK cells or lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells. However, overall effector numbers and their anticancer potencies remained restricted, which poses a limiting factor to clinical efficacy.

Identification of novel functional differences in monocyte subsets using proteomic and transcriptomic methods.

Human blood monocytes can be broadly divided into two distinct subsets: CD14+CD16- and CD14+/lowCD16+ subsets. Perturbation in their proportions in the blood has been observed in several disease conditions. Although numerous phenotypic and functional differences between the two subsets have already been described, the roles contributed by each subset during homeostasis or disease conditions are still largely unclear.