Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered T cells can be highly effective in the treatment of hematological malignancies, but mostly fail in the treatment of solid tumors. Thus, approaches using 4 advanced CAR T cells secreting immunomodulatory cytokines upon CAR signaling, known as TRUCKs (""), are currently under investigation. Based on our previous development and validation of automated and closed processing for GMP-compliant manufacturing of CAR T cells, we here present the proof of feasibility for translation of this method to TRUCKs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with minimal residual disease and receiving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) have poor survival. Adoptive administration of dendritic cells (DCs) presenting the Wilms tumor protein 1 (WT1) leukemia-associated antigen can potentially stimulate T and B cell development to harness the graft-versus-leukemia (GvL) effect after HCT. We established a simple and fast genetic modification of monocytes for simultaneous lentiviral expression of a truncated WT1 antigen (tWT1), granulocyte macrophage-colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and interferon (IFN)-α, promoting their self-differentiation into potent "induced DCs" (iDCtWT1).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical studies using autologous CAR T cells have achieved spectacular remissions in refractory CD19+ B cell leukaemia, however some of the patient treatments with CAR T cells failed. Beside the heterogeneity of leukaemia, the distribution and senescence of the autologous cells from heavily pretreated patients might be further reasons for this. We performed six consecutive large-scale manufacturing processes for CD20 CAR T cells from healthy donor leukapheresis using the automated CliniMACS Prodigy® platform.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe utilization of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) for disease modeling and drug discovery is already reality, and several first-in-man-applications as cellular therapeutics have been initiated. Implementation of good manufacturing practice (GMP)-compliant protocols for the generation of hiPSC lines is crucial to increase the application safety as well as to fulfil the legal requirements for clinical trials approval. Here we describe the development of a GMP-compatible protocol for the reprogramming of CD34 hematopoietic stem cells from peripheral blood (CD34 PBHSC) into hiPSCs using Sendai virus-based reprogramming vectors.
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