Abstract
Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are credited with antitumor activity by preclinical studies and clinical trials. Efficient expansion of iNKT cells ex vivo is essential for their translational usage. The culturing procedure described here provides an optimized method for ex vivo expansion of iNKT cells using recombinant human IL-15 (rhIL-15) and recombinant human IL-12 (rhIL-12), which results in cell products with enhanced cytokine secretion and cytotoxicity while maintaining the purity and viability of iNKT cells.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China 2016YFC1303402 (2016YFC1303402) and National Major Projects of China (2017ZX10202102). The functional enhancement of ex vivo expanded iNKT cells by rhIL-15 and rhIL-12 has been included in a Chinese patent: ZL201611031666.9. The method for culturing iNKT cells ex vivo has been applied to an investigator-initiated clinical trial (NCT03093688).
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Wang, J., Zhao, C., Xu, J. (2021). Expansion of Human iNKT Cells Ex Vivo. In: Liu, C. (eds) Invariant Natural Killer T-Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2388. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1775-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1775-5_11
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