Efficacy of third-party chimeric antigen receptor modified peripheral blood natural killer cells for adoptive cell therapy of B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

We developed an innovative and efficient, feeder-free culture method to genetically modify and expand peripheral blood-derived NK cells with high proliferative capacity, while preserving the responsiveness of their native activating receptors. Activated peripheral blood NK cells were efficiently transduced by a retroviral vector, carrying a second-generation CAR targeting CD19. CAR expression was demonstrated across the different NK-cell subsets. CAR.CD19-NK cells display higher antileukemic activity toward CD19+ cell lines and primary blasts obtained from patients with B-cell precursor ALL compared with unmodified NK cells. In vivo animal model data showed that the antileukemia activity of CAR.CD19-NK cell is superimposable to that of CAR-T cells, with a lower xenograft toxicity profile. These data support the feasibility of generating feeder-free expanded, genetically modified peripheral blood NK cells for effective "off-the-shelf" immuno-gene-therapy, while their innate alloreactivity can be safely harnessed to potentiate allogeneic cell therapy.

Chemical aerosol Raman detector.

A sensitive chemical aerosol Raman detector (CARD) has been developed for the trace detection and identification of chemical particles in the ambient atmosphere. CARD includes an improved aerosol concentrator with a concentration factor of about 40 and a CCD camera for improved detection sensitivity. Aerosolized isovanillin, which is relatively safe, has been used to characterize the performance of the CARD. The limit of detection (SNR = 10) for isovanillin in 15 s has been determined to be 1.6 pg/cm3, which corresponds to 6.3 × 109 molecules/cm3 or 0.26 ppb. While less sensitive, CARD can also detect gases. This paper provides a more detailed description of the CARD hardware and detection algorithm than has previously been published.