Ex vivo expansion and hydrogel-mediated in vivo delivery of tissue-resident memory T cells for immunotherapy.

Tissue-resident memory T (T) cells preferentially reside in peripheral tissues, serving as key players in tumor immunity and immunotherapy. The lack of effective approaches for expanding T cells and delivering these cells in vivo hinders the exploration of T cell-mediated cancer immunotherapy. Here, we report a nanoparticle artificial antigen-presenting cell (nano-aAPC) ex vivo expansion approach and an in vivo delivery system for T cells.

Alginate-based artificial antigen presenting cells expand functional CD8 T cells with memory characteristics for adoptive cell therapy.

The development of artificial Antigen Presenting Cells (aAPCs) has led to improvements in adoptive T cell therapy (ACT), an immunotherapy, for cancer treatment. aAPCs help to streamline the consistent production and expansion of T cells, thus reducing the time and costs associated with ACT. However, several issues still exist with ACT, such as insufficient T cell potency, which diminishes the translational potential for ACT.

Nanoparticle-based modulation of CD4 T cell effector and helper functions enhances adoptive immunotherapy.

Helper (CD4) T cells perform direct therapeutic functions and augment responses of cells such as cytotoxic (CD8) T cells against a wide variety of diseases and pathogens. Nevertheless, inefficient synthetic technologies for expansion of antigen-specific CD4 T cells hinders consistency and scalability of CD4 T cell-based therapies, and complicates mechanistic studies. Here we describe a nanoparticle platform for ex vivo CD4 T cell culture that mimics antigen presenting cells (APC) through display of major histocompatibility class II (MHC II) molecules.