(357ae) Bio-Instructive Scaffolds for Rapid In Vivo Manufacture of CAR T Cells

Despite the unprecedented clinical success of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy against B cell malignancies, its widespread application is limited by lengthy and labor-intensive ex vivo manufacturing procedures that result in: (i) high cost; (ii) delays to infuse CAR-T cells to patients with rapidly progressing disease; and (iii) CAR-T cells with heterogeneous composition and terminal differentiation, which limit their engraftment and persistence. Here we describe an implantable Multifunctional Alginate Scaffold for T Cell Engineering and Release (MASTER) that streamlines in vivo CAR-T cell manufacturing and reduces processing time to a single day. When seeded with human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and CD19-encoding retroviral particles, MASTER provides the appropriate interface for viral vector-mediated gene transfer and, after subcutaneous implantation, mediates the release of functional CAR-T cells in mice. We further demonstrate that in vivo-generated CAR-T cells enter the bloodstream and control distal tumor growth in a mouse xenograft model of lymphoma, showing greater persistence than conventional CAR-T cells. MASTER promises to transform CAR-T cell therapy by fast-tracking manufacture and potentially reducing the complexity and resources needed for provision of this type of therapy.

Research Interests: My long-term research interests center on developing bioinspired material-based technologies to transform production and enhance delivery of cellular therapeutics for cancer and other diseases. I am most passionate about engineering biomaterials to enable translatable technologies for unmet needs in medicine.