Abstract 4970: Establishment of a patient-derived platform for preclinical immunooncology studies using autologous tumor and TIL coculture

Abstract

Abstract The use of tumor infiltrated lymphocytes (TILs) as an adoptive cell transfer therapy to treat cancer has been conducted in clinic trials for more than two decades. TIL therapy in combination with added immunotherapy treatments, such as IL-2 or anti-CTLA4, has further improved clinical response rates. Isolated from a patient’s own tumor specimen, TILs that recognizes tumor-specific known or unknown antigens can be expanded and infused back to tumor-bearing patients to attack autologous cancer cell populations. Despite the progress in clinical research, preclinical and translational models of autologous tumor/TIL coculture have been difficult to establish. This study has established autologous tumor/TIL coculture methods directly from patient tumor specimens. Models were established from BioDuro’s viably cryopreserved tumor & TIL bank, containing more than 100,000 patient biospecimens. Each patient specimen contains a heterogeneous population of cells types, including tumor, TILs and TAFs (tumor associated fibroblasts). These cell populations were expanded under specific growth conditions to then serve as components for the patient-derived coculture systems established. In this study, TILs and monocytes from a cohort of patient tumor specimens (including kidney, melanoma and lung) were analyzed. Leukocytes, T cells, monocytes and B cells were marked with CD45, CD3, CD14, CD20. Patients’ samples were also tested for PD-1 expression levels. The results show significant individual variation on cell subpopulations and PD-1 expression. Established methods were used for expansion of TILs, supporting either CD4 or CD8 phenotypes. Autologous cancer cells were expanded at the same time. TILs and tumor cells were co-cultured and high content fluorescent image cytometry was used to monitor tumor cell killing. This study found that autologous patient-matched TILs showed preferential tumor cell killing compared to patient-unmatched TILs. This response was observed in a dose dependent fashion. In summary, the BioDuro biobank of viable tumor and TIL patient specimens served as a large and powerful immunooncology resource to establish patient-derived autologous tumor/TIL coculture assays. These assays, and the ability to readily study larger populations of cancer patients, provide a powerful in vitro platform to test immunooncology drug candidates. Citation Format: Kaede Hinada, Dennis Garland, Dileep Nair, Yong Hu, Thomas Broudy. Establishment of a patient-derived platform for preclinical immunooncology studies using autologous tumor and TIL coculture [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 4970.