Scientists grow Cells capable of fighting Cancer and HIV

Vast numbers of cells that can attack cancer and HIV have been grown in the lab, and could potentially be used to fight disease …

2013 Study Summary

Adoptive immunotherapy with functional T cells is potentially an effective therapeutic strategy for combating many types of cancer and viral infection. However, exhaustion of antigen-specific T cells represents a major challenge to this type of approach. In an effort to overcome this problem, we reprogrammed clonally expanded antigen-specific CD8+ T cells from an HIV-1-infected patient to pluripotency. The T cell-derived induced pluripotent stem cells were then redifferentiated into CD8+ T cells that had a high proliferative capacity and elongated telomeres. These “rejuvenated” cells possessed antigen-specific killing activity and exhibited T cell receptor gene-rearrangement patterns identical to those of the original T cell clone from the patient. We also found that this method can be effective for generating specific T cells for other pathology-associated antigens. Thus, this type of approach may have broad applications in the field of adoptive immunotherapy.

• Read Immune system ‘booster’ may hit cancer
  by James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, BBC News.
• Sources Generation of Rejuvenated Antigen-Specific T Cells by Reprogramming to Pluripotency and Redifferentiation, Science Direct, Volume 12, Issue 1, 3 January 2013, Pages 114–126 – Regeneration of Human Tumor Antigen-Specific T Cells from iPSCs Derived from Mature CD8+ T Cells, Science Direct, Volume 12, Issue 1, 3 January 2013, Pages 31–36.