Immune modulation and safety profile of adoptive immunotherapy using expanded autologous activated lymphocytes against advanced cancer

Expanded activated autologous lymphocyte (EAAL) therapy with CD3(+)CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocyte and CD3(-)56(+) natural killer cell as the major effector cells is a type of adoptive cell therapy. In this study, 19 patients with metastatic tumors received EAAL therapy. Two to four weeks after the administration of EAAL cells, the subsets of CD3(+)CD8(+) T lymphocytes and CD3(-)CD56(+) natural killer cells in the peripheral blood were increased significantly in comparison with those before the therapy. The number of IFN-γ secreting cells also significantly increased after the EAAL infusion (p=0.002) and the p values for the counts of CD3(+)IFN-γ(+) lymphocytes and CD3(-)IFN-γ(+) lymphocytes were 0.006 and 0.015, respectively. Moreover, the percentage of IFN-γ producing cells of the CD3(+), CD8(+) and CD3(-) subsets after infusion were all increased significantly, which indicated that EAAL therapy was able to enrich the potentially anti-tumor cytotoxic peripheral blood lymphocytes.