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

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.