Wilms' tumor 1-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes can be expanded from adult donors and cord blood

The use of WT1-specific CTL is one potential strategy to treat leukemic relapse following allogeneic stem cell transplant (SCT). Previous studies have largely focused on generating WT1-CTL from adult donors by cloning. We demonstrate that WT1-CTL can be generated from healthy adult donors and from cord blood by stimulating with an overlapping pool of peptides derived from full length WT1 and selecting antigen-specific cells based on the expression of CD137. The rapid expansion with anti-CD3 and IL-2 resulted in a 100-200-fold expansion. These CTL lysed WT1 expressing targets, including leukemia lines, in a HLA restricted manner.