Abstract
The adoptive transfer of T cells engineered with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) (hereafter referred to as CAR-T cells) specific for the B lymphocyte antigen CD19 has shown impressive clinical responses in patients with refractory B cell malignancies1,2,3,4,5,6,7. However, the therapeutic effects of CAR-T cells that target other malignancies have not yet resulted in significant clinical benefit8,9,10,11. Although inefficient tumor trafficking and various immunosuppressive mechanisms can impede CAR-T cell effector responses, the signals delivered by the current CAR constructs may still be insufficient to fully activate antitumor T cell functions. Optimal T cell activation and proliferation requires multiple signals, including T cell receptor (TCR) engagement (signal 1), co-stimulation (signal 2) and cytokine engagement (signal 3)12. However, CAR constructs currently being tested in the clinic contain a CD3z (TCR signaling) domain and co-stimulatory domain(s) but not a domain that transmits signal 3 (refs. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18). Here we have developed a novel CAR construct capable of inducing cytokine signaling after antigen stimulation. This new-generation CD19 CAR encodes a truncated cytoplasmic domain from the interleukin (IL)-2 receptor β-chain (IL-2Rβ) and a STAT3-binding tyrosine-X-X-glutamine (YXXQ) motif, together with the TCR signaling (CD3z) and co-stimulatory (CD28) domains (hereafter referred to as 28-ΔIL2RB-z(YXXQ)). The 28-ΔIL2RB-z(YXXQ) CAR-T cells showed antigen-dependent activation of the JAK kinase and of the STAT3 and STAT5 transcription factors signaling pathways, which promoted their proliferation and prevented terminal differentiation in vitro. The 28-ΔIL2RB-z(YXXQ) CAR-T cells demonstrated superior in vivo persistence and antitumor effects in models of liquid and solid tumors as compared with CAR-T cells expressing a CD28 or 4-1BB co-stimulatory domain alone. Taken together, these results suggest that our new-generation CAR has the potential to demonstrate superior antitumor effects with minimal toxicity in the clinic and that clinical translation of this novel CAR is warranted.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by CIHR Project Grant 362860 (N.H.), Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Clinical Investigator Award IA-039 (N.H.), BioCanRX Catalyst Program grant FY17CAT7 (N.H.), the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation (M.O.B. and N.H.), a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship for Overseas Researchers (Y.K.), a Guglietti Fellowship Award (Y.K.), a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship (T.G.), the Province of Ontario (T.G. and M.A.) and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postgraduate Scholarship (T.G.). This study was partly sponsored by Takara Bio, Inc.
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Y.K. and N.H. designed the project; Y.K., S.T., T.G., M.A., C.-H.W. and K.S. performed the experiments; M.D.M. and M.O.B. provided critical human samples and contributed to the writing of the manuscript; and Y.K. and N.H. analyzed the results and wrote the manuscript.
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S.T. is an employee of Takara Bio, Inc. This study was partly sponsored by Takara Bio, Inc. The University Health Network has filed a patent application related to this study on which N.H., Y.K. and S.T. are named as inventors.
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Kagoya, Y., Tanaka, S., Guo, T. et al. A novel chimeric antigen receptor containing a JAK–STAT signaling domain mediates superior antitumor effects. Nat Med 24, 352–359 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4478
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4478
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