Professor Hiroshi Kawamoto and Takuya Maeda of Kyoto University will create killer T cells (virus-infected cells and T cells that can kill cancer cells) that have the ability to kill cancer cells from human iPS cells. succeeded in.
So far, it has been shown that increasing the number of killer T cells that react with cancer cells in vitro and administering them to patients is effective in treating cancer.However, when culturing killer T cells, they were exhausted when they increased to some extent, and it was extremely difficult to efficiently increase high-quality cells.
Therefore, the research group thought that if iPS cells were produced from T cells that could recognize cancer antigens and the T cells were regenerated from the iPS cells, only T cells could be mass-produced.Based on this idea, the group succeeded in regenerating human killer T cells that respond to cancer antigens for the first time in the world in 2013.
However, since the conventional culture method can only produce cells that have a weaker ability to target and kill cancer antigens than killer T cells in the living body, the culture method has been improved this time.As a result, when young cells that produce both CD4 and CD8 molecules generated in the process of regenerating T cells from iPS cells are separated from other cells and stimulated, killer T cells with strong killing ability can be produced. Successful.By this method, when regenerated killer T cells targeting the WT1 antigen, which is abundant in leukemia and various solid cancers, were produced, the cells efficiently killed the leukemia cells in vitro.In addition, a therapeutic effect was obtained with a leukemia model prepared by injecting leukemia cells into immunodeficient mice.
This achievement is said to have advanced the strategy of cancer treatment using regenerated killer T cells toward clinical application.Currently, it is a treatment strategy for acute myeloid leukemia, but it is expected to be applied to various malignant tumors in the future.
