Cytokine Priming and Bead Isolation of CD26high T Cells

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Application

Technique to enrich CD26high T cells for the treatment of solid malignancies.

Key Benefits

  • Offers a potent and long-lived T cell product for treating patients with tumors.
  • Can translate into industrial production of cellular therapy products for cancer treatment.

Market Summary

Melanoma accounts for less than 2% of skin cancer cases but contributes to majority of skin cancer deaths. The current method of sorting CD26high T-cells is time-consuming and expensive. A more efficient priming strategy and sorting of CD26high T cells has been developed to enrich CD26high T cells in the context of melanoma. This shows it has applications for the treatment of solid malignancies and can be used to establish foundational aspects of developmental biology for this unique T cell subset as well.

Technical Summary

Emory researchers have developed a method to enrich CD26high T cells by priming with exogenous cytokines in vitro. Inventors found that these cells can be enriched and primed with cytotoxic potential using exogenous cytokines in vitro. This is highly unusual for a T cell to make cytokines without mitogenic or TCR stimulation. The team is the first to show that CD26high cells specifically are the ones uniquely responding to this cytokine strategy. Using this method, the yield of CD26high cells were over 10%, whereas the standard method only yields less than 0.5% from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). There is clinical potential of CD26high T cells as the basis for adoptive cell therapy (ACT) to treat patients with solid malignancies, specifically in melanoma.

Developmental Stage

  • Development biology of CD26high T cells.
  • Optimize concentration and timing of cytokine stimulation.
  • Logistics of cytokine priming alongside traditional stimulation and expansion.

Patent Information

App Type Country Serial No. Patent No. File Date Issued Date Patent Status
PCT PCT PCT/US2022/051528   12/1/2022   Pending
Tech ID: 21179
Published: 4/19/2022