Clinical research on a new immunotherapy for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study aimed to investigate the safety and antitumor effect of the new immunotherapy with activated autologous gamma delta T-lymphocyte (GDT) on the patients suffering from recurrent non-small cell lung cancer. Approximately 1000-folds increase of the number GDT, comprising 85 to 95% of whole cultured mononuclear cells, was observed. This GDT fraction expresses NKG2D, showing cytotoxic effect against MICA/B-positive non-small cell cancer (NSCLC) cell lines.Under the admission of IRB in this hospital, we started the clinical trial on the treatment of refractory NSCLC with activated autologous GDT. We registered 8 patients with recurrent NSCLC after the documented informed consent. All except for 2 patients who attained enough number of GDT after in vitro culture were assigned to this clinical investigation.We observed no harmful complications after administration of cultured GDT, except for one case who had suffered from common cold during the trial period, which were not related to the GDT therapy. We found that one of 3 patients who had undergone FACT-QOL questionnaire had exacerbation of QOL during the study, which were mainly due to the common cold.All of the patients had measurable foci of recurrence, which were not decreased in size by Computed tomography during the study. We performed flow-cytometry study of the peripheral blood of the patients undergoing GDT therapy, and we observed that number of GDT was increased during the therapy. We also observed cytotoxic effect of the GDT against U266 cell line which expresses MICA on the surface. We confirmed that NKG2D-MICA/B cytotoxic effect on GDT of the patients.In this study so far, we actually gave each patient the activated GDT only 4 times. We suggest that increment of the dosage of GDT would make breakthrough on the immunotherapy of NSCLC.