Synergistic effect of lymphotactin and interferon γ-inducible protein-10 transgene expression in T-cell localization and adoptive T-cell therapy of tumors

The lack of efficient T-cell infiltration of tumors is a major obstacle to successful adoptive T-cell therapy. We have previously demonstrated that adenovirus (AdV)-mediated transgene lymphotactin (Lptn) or IP-10 expression in tumors can significantly enhance T-cell tumor infiltration. In this study, active OVA-specific CD8(+) T cells were prepared by coculturing naive OVA-specific CD8(+) T cells from transgenic OT I mice with OVA-I peptide-pulsed dendritic cells in vitro. These XCR-I- and CXCR3-expressing T cells predominantly secreted IFN-gamma and displayed significant killing activity (84% at effector:target cell ratio of 1.5) against OVA-expressing EG7 tumor cells through perforin-mediated pathway. Our data also showed that chemokine Lptn and IP-10 not only can chemoattract, but also stimulate proliferation of CD8(+) T cells in vitro, and that a mixture of Lptn and IP-10 can more efficiently chemoattract CD8(+) T cells than either one of them. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the transferred CD8(+) T cells detected in group of tumors treated with both AdVLptn and AdVIP-10 (group a) are around 4 and 2 times more than that in groups of tumors treated with control AdVpLpA (group b) and either AdVIP-10 (group c) or AdVLptn (group d), respectively. Around 873% of mice in group a were tumor-free compared to the aggressive tumor growth in all 8 mice of group b and 25% or 37.5% cured mice seen in groups c and d (p < 0.05). Thus, our results indicate that enhancement of adoptive T-cell therapy can be obtained by double tranmsgene Lptn and IP-10 expression, which facilitates CD8(+) T-cell tumor localization through proliferation and chemoattraction of the transferred CD8(+) T cells by in situ chemokine transgene expressions in the tumors. Collectively, our data provide solid evidence of a potent synergy between adoptive T-cell therapy and adenovirus-mediated Lptn and IP-10 gene transfer into tumor tissues, which culminated in the T-cell tumor localization and eradication of well-established tumor masses. (C) 2004 Wiley Liss, Inc.