Microfluidic Squeezing Enables MHC Class I Antigen Presentation by Diverse Immune Cells to Elicit CD8+ T Cell Responses with Antitumor Activity.

CD8+ T cell responses are the foundation of the recent clinical success of immunotherapy in oncologic indications. Although checkpoint inhibitors have enhanced the activity of existing CD8+ T cell responses, therapeutic approaches to generate Ag-specific CD8+ T cell responses have had limited success. Here, we demonstrate that cytosolic delivery of Ag through microfluidic squeezing enables MHC class I presentation to CD8+ T cells by diverse cell types. In murine dendritic cells (DCs), squeezed DCs were ∼1000-fold more potent at eliciting CD8+ T cell responses than DCs cross-presenting the same amount of protein Ag. The approach also enabled engineering of less conventional APCs, such as T cells, for effective priming of CD8+ T cells in vitro and in vivo. Mixtures of immune cells, such as murine splenocytes, also elicited CD8+ T cell responses in vivo when squeezed with Ag. We demonstrate that squeezing enables effective MHC class I presentation by human DCs, T cells, B cells, and PBMCs and that, in clinical scale formats, the system can squeeze up to 2 billion cells per minute. Using the human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) murine model, TC-1, we demonstrate that squeezed B cells, T cells, and unfractionated splenocytes elicit antitumor immunity and correlate with an influx of HPV-specific CD8+ T cells such that >80% of CD8s in the tumor were HPV specific. Together, these findings demonstrate the potential of cytosolic Ag delivery to drive robust CD8+ T cell responses and illustrate the potential for an autologous cell-based vaccine with minimal turnaround time for patients.

Circadian Rhythm Disruption Promotes Lung Tumorigenesis.

Circadian rhythms are 24-hr oscillations that control a variety of biological processes in living systems, including two hallmarks of cancer, cell division and metabolism. Circadian rhythm disruption by shift work is associated with greater risk for cancer development and poor prognosis, suggesting a putative tumor-suppressive role for circadian rhythm homeostasis. Using a genetically engineered mouse model of lung adenocarcinoma, we have characterized the effects of circadian rhythm disruption on lung tumorigenesis. We demonstrate that both physiologic perturbation (jet lag) and genetic mutation of the central circadian clock components decreased survival and promoted lung tumor growth and progression. The core circadian genes Per2 and Bmal1 were shown to have cell-autonomous tumor-suppressive roles in transformation and lung tumor progression. Loss of the central clock components led to increased c-Myc expression, enhanced proliferation, and metabolic dysregulation. Our findings demonstrate that both systemic and somatic disruption of circadian rhythms contribute to cancer progression.

Microfluidic squeezing for intracellular antigen loading in polyclonal B-cells as cellular vaccines.

B-cells are promising candidate autologous antigen-presenting cells (APCs) to prime antigen-specific T-cells both in vitro and in vivo. However to date, a significant barrier to utilizing B-cells as APCs is their low capacity for non-specific antigen uptake compared to "professional" APCs such as dendritic cells. Here we utilize a microfluidic device that employs many parallel channels to pass single cells through narrow constrictions in high throughput. This microscale "cell squeezing" process creates transient pores in the plasma membrane, enabling intracellular delivery of whole proteins from the surrounding medium into B-cells via mechano-poration. We demonstrate that both resting and activated B-cells process and present antigens delivered via mechano-poration exclusively to antigen-specific CD8(+)T-cells, and not CD4(+)T-cells. Squeezed B-cells primed and expanded large numbers of effector CD8(+)T-cells in vitro that produced effector cytokines critical to cytolytic function, including granzyme B and interferon-γ. Finally, antigen-loaded B-cells were also able to prime antigen-specific CD8(+)T-cells in vivo when adoptively transferred into mice. Altogether, these data demonstrate crucial proof-of-concept for mechano-poration as an enabling technology for B-cell antigen loading, priming of antigen-specific CD8(+)T-cells, and decoupling of antigen uptake from B-cell activation.

Ex vivo cytosolic delivery of functional macromolecules to immune cells.

Intracellular delivery of biomolecules, such as proteins and siRNAs, into primary immune cells, especially resting lymphocytes, is a challenge. Here we describe the design and testing of microfluidic intracellular delivery systems that cause temporary membrane disruption by rapid mechanical deformation of human and mouse immune cells. Dextran, antibody and siRNA delivery performance is measured in multiple immune cell types and the approach's potential to engineer cell function is demonstrated in HIV infection studies.

A conditional system to specifically link disruption of protein-coding function with reporter expression in mice.

Conditional gene deletion in mice has contributed immensely to our understanding of many biological and biomedical processes. Despite an increasing awareness of nonprotein-coding functional elements within protein-coding transcripts, current gene-targeting approaches typically involve simultaneous ablation of noncoding elements within targeted protein-coding genes. The potential for protein-coding genes to have additional noncoding functions necessitates the development of novel genetic tools capable of precisely interrogating individual functional elements. We present a strategy that couples Cre/loxP-mediated conditional gene disruption with faithful GFP reporter expression in mice in which Cre-mediated stable inversion of a splice acceptor-GFP-splice donor cassette concurrently disrupts protein production and creates a GFP fusion product. Importantly, cassette inversion maintains physiologic transcript structure, thereby ensuring proper microRNA-mediated regulation of the GFP reporter, as well as maintaining expression of nonprotein-coding elements. To test this potentially generalizable strategy, we generated and analyzed mice with this conditional knockin reporter targeted to the Hmga2 locus.

Genetic and clonal dissection of murine small cell lung carcinoma progression by genome sequencing.

Small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) is a highly lethal, smoking-associated cancer with few known targetable genetic alterations. Using genome sequencing, we characterized the somatic evolution of a genetically engineered mouse model (GEMM) of SCLC initiated by loss of Trp53 and Rb1. We identified alterations in DNA copy number and complex genomic rearrangements and demonstrated a low somatic point mutation frequency in the absence of tobacco mutagens. Alterations targeting the tumor suppressor Pten occurred in the majority of murine SCLC studied, and engineered Pten deletion accelerated murine SCLC and abrogated loss of Chr19 in Trp53; Rb1; Pten compound mutant tumors. Finally, we found evidence for polyclonal and sequential metastatic spread of murine SCLC by comparative sequencing of families of related primary tumors and metastases. We propose a temporal model of SCLC tumorigenesis with implications for human SCLC therapeutics and the nature of cancer-genome evolution in GEMMs.