Nature Nanotechnology 2014-08-01

A carbon nanotube-polymer composite for T-cell therapy.

Tarek R Fadel, Fiona A Sharp, Nalini Vudattu, Ragy Ragheb, Justin Garyu, Dongin Kim, Enping Hong, Nan Li, Gary L Haller, Lisa D Pfefferle, Sune Justesen, Kevan C Herold, Kevin C Harold, Tarek M Fahmy

Index: Nat. Nanotechnol. 9(8) , 639-47, (2014)

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Abstract

Clinical translation of cell therapies requires strategies that can manufacture cells efficiently and economically. One promising way to reproducibly expand T cells for cancer therapy is by attaching the stimuli for T cells onto artificial substrates with high surface area. Here, we show that a carbon nanotube-polymer composite can act as an artificial antigen-presenting cell to efficiently expand the number of T cells isolated from mice. We attach antigens onto bundled carbon nanotubes and combined this complex with polymer nanoparticles containing magnetite and the T-cell growth factor interleukin-2 (IL-2). The number of T cells obtained was comparable to clinical standards using a thousand-fold less soluble IL-2. T cells obtained from this expansion were able to delay tumour growth in a murine model for melanoma. Our results show that this composite is a useful platform for generating large numbers of cytotoxic T cells for cancer immunotherapy.