In vitro comparison of cytotoxicity of CD19 CAR-CIK and CD19 CAR-T cells

Despite the success of CAR-T cells in the treatment of hematologic malignancies, the use of allogeneic sources of T lymphocytes to produce these cells is associated with risk of GvHD. Cytokine induced killer (CIK) cells are a population with a lower risk of GvHD. Therefore, CAR-CIK cells can be evaluated as a potential alternative for CAR-T cells.

In this experimental study, after isolation and culture of mononuclear cells isolated from the peripheral blood of two healthy donors, T and CIK cells are transduced with CD19 gene containing lentiviral vector. On the 16th day of culture, to compare the cytotoxicity of CAR-T and CAR-CIK cells, these cells were co-cultured with CD19+ K562 target cells, and the death rate among the target cells was measured using a lactate dehydrogenase release assay kit. Student T-test, Anova and post-hoc Tukey were used for statistical analysis using Graph Pad prism software 8. A p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

In both CAR-CIK and CAR-T cell, CAR receptor caused a significant increase in cytotoxicity. So that no significant difference was observed between the cytotoxicity of CAR-T cells (67.8% ± 1.7) and CAR-CIK (65.1% ± 1.8).

Conclusions :

CAR-CIK cells show a suitable in vitro cytotoxicity, so they can be considered as a potential alternative for CAR-T cells. However, more preclinical and clinical studies are needed to compare other effective dimensions in the function of these two cell types.