Multimodal In Vivo Tracking of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells in Preclinical Glioblastoma Models

Iron oxide nanoparticles have been used to track the accumulation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, the only nanoparticle available for clinical applications to date, ferumoxytol, has caused rare but severe anaphylactic reactions. MegaPro nanoparticles (MegaPro-NPs) provide an improved safety profile. We evaluated whether MegaPro-NPs can be applied for in vivo tracking of CAR T cells in a mouse model of glioblastoma multiforme.

We labeled tumor-targeted CD70CAR (8R-70CAR) T cells and non-tumor-targeted controls with MegaPro-NPs, followed by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, Prussian blue staining, and cell viability assays. Next, we treated 42 NRG mice bearing U87-MG/eGFP-fLuc glioblastoma multiforme xenografts with MegaPro-NP-labeled/unlabeled CAR T cells or labeled untargeted T cells and performed serial MRI, magnetic particle imaging, and histology studies. The Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to evaluate overall group differences, and the Mann-Whitney U test was applied to compare the pairs of groups.

MegaPro-NP-labeled CAR T cells demonstrated significantly increased iron uptake compared with unlabeled controls ( P < 0.01). Cell viability, activation, and exhaustion markers were not significantly different between the 2 groups ( P > 0.05). In vivo, tumor T2* relaxation times were significantly lower after treatment with MegaPro-NP-labeled CAR T cells compared with untargeted T cells ( P < 0.01). There is no significant difference in tumor growth inhibition between mice injected with labeled and unlabeled CAR T cells.

MegaPro-NPs can be used for in vivo tracking of CAR T cells. Because MegaPro-NPs recently completed phase II clinical trial investigation as an MRI contrast agent, MegaPro-NP is expected to be applied to track CAR T cells in cancer immunotherapy trials in the near future.