Abstract

Multiple myeloma is a life-threatening hematological malignancy, which is rarely curable by conventional therapies. Immunotherapy, using tumor antigen-specific, cytotoxic T-lymphocytes, may represent an alternative or additional treatment for multiple myeloma. In this study, we used hybrid cell lines, generated by fusion of an EBV B-lymphoblastoid cell line (B-LCL) and myeloma cells, to stimulate in vitro peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) from patients with multiple myeloma. We investigated induction of antigen-specific, cytotoxic T-lymphocytes to the well-defined tumor associated antigens (TAAs) hTERT, MUC1, MAGE-C1 and CS1, which have been shown to be expressed in a high proportion of cases of multiple myeloma. HLA-A2-peptide pentamer staining, interferon-γ and perforin ELISpot assays, as well as cytotoxicity assays were used. Following several rounds of in vitro stimulation, the hybrid cell lines induced antigen-specific, cytotoxic T-lymphocytes to four candidate TAAs in PBLs from HLA-A2+ multiple myeloma patients, using known HLA-A2 restricted peptide epitopes of the TAAs. In contrast, the HLA-A2+ myeloma cell line U266 failed to induce antigen-specific, cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in vitro. Our data indicate that B-LCL/myeloma hybrid cell lines induce antigen-specific, cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in PBLs isolated from multiple myeloma patients in vitro and may represent a novel strategy for use in adoptive immunotherapy of multiple myeloma.

Highlights

  • Using conventional therapies, multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable condition

  • We have shown that in vitro co-culture of Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with hybrid cell lines resulted in the induction and expansion of tumor antigen-specific T cells with cytotoxic and IFN-γreleasing activity against a range of relevant tumor associated antigen (TAA) expressed by myeloma cells (MUC1, hTERT, CS1, MAGE C1)

  • Our study demonstrates the ability of hybrid cell lines, formed by fusion of HMy2 cells and myeloma cells, to induce antigen specific cytotoxic T cells in vitro among peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) obtained from HLA A2+ patients with multiple myeloma

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Summary

Introduction

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable condition. Adoptive T cell therapy, drawing on allogeneic or autologous tumor-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL), may represent a potential additional treatment for MM. Hybrid cell lines, generated by fusion of professional antigen presenting cells (APC) with tumor cells, make for a promising strategy for tumor immunotherapy [1, 2]. Such cell lines express a range of tumor associated antigen (TAAs) and present these in the context of both HLA class I and HLA class II molecules, with appropriate costimulatory signals [1, 2]. The use of allogeneic APCs in hybrid cell formation may lead to the expression of allogeneic MHC class I aside from MHC class II by the generated hybrid cells, which exerts a desirable adjuvant effect on the stimulation of antigen-specific T lymphocytes [3].

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