Engineered artificial antigen presenting cells facilitate direct and efficient expansion of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes

BACKGROUND: Development of a standardized platform for the rapid expansion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) with anti-tumor function from patients with limited TIL numbers or tumor tissues challenges their clinical application. METHODS: To facilitate adoptive immunotherapy, we applied genetically-engineered K562 cell-based artificial antigen presenting cells (aAPCs) for the direct and rapid expansion of TILs isolated from primary cancer specimens. RESULTS: TILs outgrown in IL-2 undergo rapid, CD28-independent expansion in response to aAPC stimulation that requires provision of exogenous IL-2 cytokine support. aAPCs induce numerical expansion of TILs that is statistically similar to an established rapid expansion method at a 100-fold lower feeder cell to TIL ratio, and greater than those achievable using anti-CD3/CD28 activation beads or extended IL-2 culture. aAPC-expanded TILs undergo numerical expansion of tumor antigen-specific cells, remain amenable to secondary aAPC-based expansion, and have low CD4/CD8 ratios and FOXP3+ CD4+ cell frequencies. TILs can also be expanded directly from fresh enzyme-digested tumor specimens when pulsed with aAPCs. These "young" TILs are tumor-reactive, positively skewed in CD8+ lymphocyte composition, CD28 and CD27 expression, and contain fewer FOXP3+ T cells compared to parallel IL-2 cultures. CONCLUSION: Genetically-enhanced aAPCs represent a standardized, "off-the-shelf" platform for the direct ex vivo expansion of TILs of suitable number, phenotype and function for use in adoptive immunotherapy.