(483d) Engineering Metabolically Armored T Cell Therapies for Solid Tumor Translation
AIChE Annual Meeting
2021
2021 Annual Meeting
Food, Pharmaceutical & Bioengineering Division
Immunoengineering
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - 1:24pm to 1:42pm
There exist two ADA isoforms, one that is intracellularly restricted (ADA1) and one that is secreted (ADA2). Weâve engineered HEK293T and Jurkat T cells with ADA enzymes and mutants thereof to assess their level protein production and enzyme activity in lysates and supernatants. Using kinetic assays, we confirmed that ADA1 is largely intracellularly restricted, making ADA2 the pertinent protein for T cell therapy applications. Weâve tested promoter and other variations in genetic circuitry to increase the secretion of ADA2. We further mutated active site residues in the protein that improved the Km, which resulted in a 10-fold activity increase of the enzyme. Collectively, this work interfaces cellular and protein engineering simultaneously to demonstrate the first ever attempt at engineering improved T cell therapies that degrade immunosuppressive metabolites. These improvements will serve to facilitate the translation of T cell therapies to the solid tumor microenvironment.
Finally, weâll discuss ongoing efforts to identify even further improved variants of ADA2, through structure-based alignments with homologous enzymes and the construction and screening of a large protein library, as well as construction of an IL-2 promoter-driven luciferase construct that we can use to demonstrate the capability immune cells and the Jurkat cell line to resist adenosine-mediated immune suppression in vitro.