Corning® KBM581: Nutritious, Serum-free Media For CAR-T Cell Expansion

T cells that express a tumor-associated chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) show potential as an alternative adoptive cell therapy treatment for tumor patients and patients with blood cancers¹. When considering an adoptive cell therapy approach, the transfusion of a sufficient number of CAR-T cells with an appropriate phenotype is critical². CAR-T cell expansion requires anti-CD3/CD28 microbeads combined with IL-2, as well as the use of a nutritious, serum-free medium to ensure the safety and efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy.

Corning KBM581 has been shown to be a nutritious, safe, and serum-free medium for other immune cell therapies, such as CIK and NK cells. With this track record, KBM581 has the potential to support lymphocytes expand to a high fold rate with an optimized phenotype.

To discover which medium among several commercialized media (including KBM581) is most appropriate for supporting CAR-T cell growth, the research group from Bioraid Bio generated CAR-T cells and analyzed the expansion folds and phenotype between different media. The study showed that KBM581 could efficiently expand CAR-T cells to a fold rate that was sufficiently high to transfuse B-ALL (acute lymphoid leukemia of B cells) patients for clinical trial. It also showed a high proportion of CD3+CD8+ T cell subsets (>80%), which indicated the cytotoxicity of the cultured cells.