Mumbai, Feb 5 (PTI) The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) on Thursday said its researchers, in collaboration with Monash University, have developed a simpler way to recover lab-grown immune cells for T-cell-based cancer therapies.
A team from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at IIT Bombay, led by Prof Prakriti Tayalia, developed a new method to gently recover T-cells after growing them in the laboratory, the institute said in a release.
The study was carried out in collaboration with Prof Neil Cameron of Monash University.
Immunotherapy, which involves boosting the body’s own immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells, has shown promising results in cancer treatment.
In immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell, doctors take T-cells (a type of immune cell) from a patient’s blood, and modify them in the laboratory so they can better recognise and attack cancer cells.
These modified cells are then grown in large numbers and infused back into the patient’s bloodstream to help fight cancer.
A key requirement for T-cell-based immunotherapy is an ample supply of healthy, active T-cells. These cells, grown outside the body, must be collected gently so that they remain alive and functional when returned to the patient.
Finding safe and efficient ways to grow T-cells and retrieve them is, therefore, an important part of making these therapies work.
Prof Tayalia and her team worked with a specific type of scaffold made using a process called electrospinning.
Earlier studies by the team and other research groups have shown that T-cells grown on such scaffolds become more active and multiply faster. But as T-cells move deep into the spaces between the fibres, they become difficult to remove.
For any therapy, cells must be collected, tested, and finally delivered to patients, and if too many cells remain trapped in the scaffold, the process becomes inefficient.
“Cell recovery sounds simple on paper, but in practice it turns out to be one of the biggest challenges,” said Prof Tayalia, adding that without enough healthy cells, they cannot be tested properly for the therapy.
To address this problem, the team grew Jurkat T-cells (a human cell line grown and used in the laboratory to study T-cell biology, cancer and HIV) inside electrospun scaffolds made from a material called polycaprolactone.
The researchers observed that the cells actively moved into the scaffold and became tightly lodged between the fibres. Even strong flushing with a pipette using the growth medium could not remove all the cells, especially those stuck at fibre junctions.
“Theoretically, T-cells are considered easy to handle because they are ‘suspension cells’ – they usually float freely in liquid. In reality, when placed inside a dense fibre network, they grip tightly,” the study’s first author Dr Jaydeep Das said.
The researchers then tested three different methods for collecting the cells. The first was simple manual flushing in the growth medium using a pipette. The second method used TrypLE, a version of the enzyme trypsin that helps detach cells in laboratories, and the third method used Accutase, a milder enzyme designed to remove cells more gently.
Researchers found that cells recovered with Accutase survived in greater numbers and behaved more like healthy T-cells, forming clusters, an essential step before T-cells divide and continue to grow well after recovery.
“Harsh treatments to cells, using enzymes such as trypsin, can damage key surface proteins needed for immune signalling and activation, reducing the cell’s therapeutic usefulness. Accutase appears mild enough to avoid this problem,” said Prof Tayalia.
The study’s findings could help laboratories use such scaffolds when preparing cells for therapies such as CAR T-cell treatment.
“If we want these advanced therapies to reach patients, every step matters. How we grow cells, and how we retrieve them, can make a real difference,” Prof Tayalia stated.
Building on this work, the team has also found that T-cells grown on scaffolds can kill cancer cells more effectively.
In the future, researchers are planning to test these findings in animal models and explore the possibility of placing T-cell-loaded scaffolds directly inside the body, she added. PTI SM KRK
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