IL-15 enhances the antitumor effect of human antigen-specific CD8+ T cells by cellular senescence delay

Jinsheng Weng1, Kelsey E Moriarty2, Flavio Egidio Baio2

  • 1Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA; Department of Center Laboratory, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.

Oncoimmunology
|January 27, 2017
PubMed

Optimal expansion protocols for adoptive human T-cell therapy often include interleukin (IL)-15; however, the mechanism by which IL-15 improves the in vivo antitumor effect of T cells remains to be elucidated. Using human T cells generated from HLA-A2+ donors against novel T-cell epitopes derived from the human U266 myeloma cell line Ig light chain V-region (idiotype) as a model, we found that T cells cultured with IL-15 provided superior resistance to tumor growth in vivo, compared with IL-2, after adoptive transfer into immunodeficient hosts. This effect of IL-15 was associated with delayed/reversed senescence in tumor antigen-specific memory CD8+ T cells mediated through downregulation of P21WAF1, P16INK4a, and P53 expression. Compared to IL-2, IL-15 stimulation dramatically activated JAK3-STAT5 signaling and inhibited the expression of DNA damage genes. Thus, our study elucidates a new mechanism for IL-15 in the regulation of STAT signaling pathways and CD8+ T-cell senescence.

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