Isolation Of CD19 CAR T Cells Directly From Patient Samples

By Dr. Thomas Stübig, Molekulargenetik, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holtstein, Kiel

In recent years, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has been in the spotlight because of its high clinical relevance in the fight against certain hematological malignancies. Patient-derived T cells (autologous) or T cells from healthy donors (allogenic) are used to generate CAR T cells. Typically, procedure steps include the isolation of T cells out of blood, genetic modification of cells, ex vivo expansion, and reinfusion into the patient. Following reinfusion, the CAR binds specifically to a surface antigen and kills the cancer cell.

Despite the high rate of complete remissions of 57–93% of the CAR T cell products², the treatment has limitations. Some treatments are unsuccessful and lead to relapse or patients are resistant to CAR T cell therapy. The possible mechanisms can be very complex. However, to move the field forward, increased research efforts are needed to address the challenges and analyses of CAR T cells during treatment.²

Here, we demonstrate how CAR T cells from low frequency material are isolated by the MACSprep™ CD19 CAR MicroBead kit, human to increase the sensitivity of further downstream applications. Using MACS® Technology, we were able to isolate CAR T cells directly from patients’ whole blood samples to analyze fully functional CAR T cells. The analysis of the cells days after infusion or at different stages of therapy enables us to investigate CAR T cells in more detail and improve CAR T cell research.