Teamwork for the cure: Combination NK cell and CAR T cell therapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and natural killer (NK) cells are immune cells able to target cancers. To date, seven CAR T cell products have been FDA approved for treatment of blood cancers. These products exceed the expectations of standard care for remissions. However, there are still major treatment gaps in CAR T cell treatable cancers and no FDA-approved CAR T cell treatments for solid cancers. We have found that although CAR T cells and NK cells are limited in their respective monotherapies, they display mutually beneficial traits when co-administered.

I will present a novel and accessible pipeline for simultaneously manufacturing CAR T cell and NK cell products for cancer immunotherapy in a hard-to-treat solid cancer model using ‘kit-set’ artificial antigen presenting cells (aAPC). The results illustrate the synergy of teamwork between different immune cells to provide optimised cellular therapy for refractory cancers.

To allow international researchers access to our new NK cell expansion technology, our ‘kit-set’ aAPC vectors are publicly available:
https://www.addgene.org/Alexander_McLellan