HSC-Engineered Off-The-Shelf iNKT Cell Therapy For COVID-19
Dr. Lili Yang is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA. The Yang Lab aims to develop gene and cell therapies that engineer patient immune systems to recognize and kill diseased cells and pathogens while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.
Dr. Lili Yang and colleagues are working on using invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cell therapy to fight COVID-19 coronavirus. Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are known as the “special force” of the immune system. iNKT cells can deploy multiple mechanisms to attack diseased cells and viruses through direct killing and adjuvant effects. Most importantly, they do not cause graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), making them attractive candidates for the development of universal off-the-shelf cellular therapy. However, because of their extremely low numbers and high variabilities in humans, it is challenging to grow therapeutic numbers of iNKT cells from peripheral blood cells of allogenic human donors.
Yang Lab developed a method to generate invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) through iNKT T cell receptor gene engineering. An artificial thymic organoid in vitro culture system further supports the differentiation of human HSCs into T cells at high efficiency and high yield. Using this approach, G-CSF-mobilized CD34+ HSCs harvested from a single healthy donor can be used to produce 1012 scale of homogenous human iNKT cells of potent antiviral capacity, which is equivalent to 1,000 to 10,000 doses of therapeutic cellular products. These engineered iNKT cells may be used to treat COVID-19 coronavirus.
Additional Information:
Link to Faculty website: https://www.liliyanglab.com/
Link to relevant cases: 2018-594