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

Abstract 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.