Using the hematopoietic transplantation platform for TCR-engineered adoptive immunotherapy of leukemia

Background: Transfer of T cell receptor genes (TCR) directed against tumor-associated antigens can be used to circumvent tolerance and to increase the precursor frequency of tumor-reactive T cells. So far mainly autologous T cells have been used as a T cell source. In a recent clinical trial on melanoma patients (Morgan et. al. Science, 2006) prolonged in vivo survival of the transduced T cells seemed to be critical for a clinical response to therapy. We hypothesized that the use of allogeneic T cells might improve the persistence of TCR gene-transduced T cells after adoptive transfer by a continous alloreactive…