[Immunotherapy using T cells for treating viral infections]

Recipients of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation suffering from severe immunosuppression and immune dysregulation because of GVHD or other causes are at higher risk of viral infection. Often, cytomegalovirus and EB virus are reactivated from their latent state in these patients ; viral infections thus remain a primary cause of severe morbidity and mortality. Since the 1990s, virus-specific T cells have been generated by different methods using immunogenic epitope peptides or EBV-LCL from transplant donors, and studies have demonstrated the efficacy of these methods. However, establishing such order-made, virus-specific T cells requires 8-10 weeks, which is not feasible for application in the frontline of clinics. Recent advances, such as direct donor T cell selection using peptide-HLA multimers or cytokine capture method and virus-specific T cells bank generated using third-party donors, facilitated the broadening of the applicability of this method. The clinical development of virus-specific T-cell therapy is considered as the prototype of future T-cell immunotherapy for various infections or malignant diseases.