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Natural Killer Cells pp 175–193Cite as

Ex Vivo Expansion of Human NK Cells Using K562 Engineered to Express Membrane Bound IL21

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Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1441))

Abstract

Natural killer (NK) cells have gained significant attention for adoptive immunotherapy of cancer due to their well-documented antitumor function. In order to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of NK cell adoptive immunotherapy in preclinical models with a potential for clinical translation, there is a need for a reliable platform for ex vivo expansion of NK cells. Numerous methods are reported in literature using cytokines and feeder cells to activate and expand human NK cells, and many of these methods are limited by low-fold expansion, cytokine dependency of expanded NK cells or expansion-related senescence. In this chapter, a robust NK cell expansion protocol is described using K562 cell line gene modified to express membrane bound IL21 (K562 mb.IL21). We had previously demonstrated that this platform enables the highest fold expansion of NK cells reported in the literature to date (>47,000-folds in 21 days), and produces highly activated and pure NK cells without signs of senescence, as determined by telomere shortening.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Pediatrics, The University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Unit # 853, Houston, TX, 77054, USA

    Srinivas S. Somanchi Ph.D. & Dean A. Lee

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  1. Srinivas S. Somanchi Ph.D.
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  2. Dean A. Lee
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Correspondence to Srinivas S. Somanchi Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Pediatrics, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA

    Srinivas S. Somanchi

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Somanchi, S.S., Lee, D.A. (2016). Ex Vivo Expansion of Human NK Cells Using K562 Engineered to Express Membrane Bound IL21. In: Somanchi, S. (eds) Natural Killer Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1441. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3684-7_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3684-7_15

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3682-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-3684-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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