Study of the susceptibility of human colorectal tumor explants to LAK-cell lysis: comparison of various cytotoxicity tests

In vitro models to study natural killer cell dynamics in the tumor microenvironment

Immunotherapy is revolutionizing cancer therapy. The rapid development of new immunotherapeutic strategies to treat solid tumors is posing new challenges for preclinical research, demanding novel in vitro methods to test treatments. Such methods should meet specific requirements, such as enabling the evaluation of immune cell responses like cytotoxicity or cytokine release, and infiltration into the tumor microenvironment using cancer models representative of the original disease. They should allow high-throughput and high-content analysis, to evaluate the efficacy of treatments and understand immune-evasion processes to facilitate development of new therapeutic targets. Ideally, they should be suitable for personalized immunotherapy testing, providing information for patient stratification. Consequently, the application of in vitro 3-dimensional (3D) cell culture models, such as tumor spheroids and organoids, is rapidly expanding in the immunotherapeutic field, coupled with the development of novel imaging-based techniques and -omic analysis. In this paper, we review the recent advances in the development of in vitro 3D platforms applied to natural killer (NK) cell-based cancer immunotherapy studies, highlighting the benefits and limitations of the current methods, and discuss new concepts and future directions of the field.

The carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) modulates effector-target cell interaction by binding to activated lymphocytes

We and others have shown that the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) modulates the susceptibility of human colorectal carcinoma cells to cytotoxic lymphocytes. We now demonstrate that the density of the CEA molecules on the tumor cell surface has a determining influence on its protective function. In contrast, CEA released by tumor cells has no protective effect for CEA-negative cells. To elucidate the responsible mechanism, we analyzed the binding properties of CEA to lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells. In agreement with our observation that only membrane-bound CEA provides protection, we found that intercellular contact between LAK cells and CEA-expressing tumor cells is required for binding of CEA to LAK cells. Using FACScan analysis, we demonstrate the presence of CEA on lymphocytes co-cultured with CEA-transfected cells but not after co-culture with their parental cells and after incubation with soluble CEA. Interestingly, following overnight co-culture the amount of bound CEA on LAK cells was identical regardless of adherence on tumor cells or loss of contact with tumor cells. This indicates that CEA is released from the tumor cells after binding to LAK cells. Our results suggest that tumor cells can modulate effector cell adhesion by regulating the turnover rate of CEA on the tumor cell membrane.

Culture of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes from melanoma and colon carcinoma: removal of tumour cells does not affect tumour-specificity

The therapeutic potential of adoptive therapy using tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) has been demonstrated in a number of clinical trials. However, freshly isolated tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) are often impaired in their proliferative and cytotoxic responses, which limits their use in immunotherapy. Several hypotheses with regard to the poor effector function of TIL have been postulated, including the production of immunosuppressive factors by tumour cells. In a previous paper we reported the efficient expansion of immunoreactive TIL from a variety of solid tumours by stimulation with a combination of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against CD3 and CD28. In the present study we analysed whether this protocol would be improved by the removal of tumour cells at the start of the culture. We tested a highly immunogenic tumour, melanoma, and a poorly immunogenic tumour, colon carcinoma. Removal of tumour cells highly improved anti-CD3/CD28 stimulated expansion of TIL from colon carcinoma, resulting in a significantly higher percentage of potentially tumour-specific CD8-positive T-cells and a reduced CD4/CD8 ratio compared to expansion in the presence of tumour cells. In contrast, expansion and CD4/CD8 ratio of melanoma-derived TIL was not significantly influenced by the removal of autologous tumour cells. CD3/CD28-stimulated melanoma TIL cultured in the absence of tumour cells showed specific lysis of autologous tumour cells comparable to melanoma TIL cultured in high-dose IL2. However, no cytotoxicity could be detected in colon TIL irrespective of the culture conditions used. On the other hand, 3/8 colon carcinoma TIL cultures and 9/12 melanoma-derived TIL cultures showed IFN gamma secretion upon stimulation with autologous tumour cells. We conclude that stimulation of TIL with a combination of mAbs to CD3 and CD28 in the absence of tumour cells induces efficient expansion of potentially tumour-specific cells from a highly and a poorly immunogenic tumour. Removal of tumour cells does not have a negative influence on the generation of tumour-specific T cells, while cell yield improves. Therefore, for large-scale cultures this protocol can efficiently induce the outgrowth of tumour-specific TIL, at the same time providing a useful source of autologous tumour cells that can be stored and used to direct or test antitumour specificity.

Susceptibility of colorectal-carcinoma cells to natural-killer-mediated lysis: relationship to CEA expression and degree of differentiation

This study addresses the relevance of colorectal-carcinoma-cell (CRC) CEA expression and degree of differentiation in natural-killer(NK)-mediated lysis susceptibility. A 51Cr-release cytotoxicity assay performed with 5 human CRC lines demonstrated that CRC CEA expression was related to resistance to NK lysis. Moreover, the addition of anti-CEA Fab fragments to the assay led to a significant increase of lysability of high-CEA-producing and NK-resistant cells (LS 174-T), whereas purified CEA drastically reduced lysis of low-CEA-producing and NK-susceptible cells (LISP-I) in a dose-dependent manner. These results strongly suggest that CEA plays a causal role in CRC resistance to NK lysis. Nevertheless, our data did not demonstrate CEA binding to effector cell surface, suggesting that CEA expression can protect CRC, possibly by preventing NK-tumor-cell adhesion to occur. Our results also show that CRC susceptibility to NK lysis was related to a less differentiated phenotype. HCT-8, which are poorly differentiated and low-CEA-producing cells, were cultured in vitro in the presence of the differentiation agent sodium butyrate. Treated cells became less susceptible to NK lysis as they progressed towards a more differentiated phenotype. However, CEA production was not altered upon differentiation. Our study thus demonstrates that both features, CEA expression and degree of cellular differentiation, may individually influence CRC susceptibility to NK lysis.

CEA expression of colorectal adenocarcinomas is correlated with their resistance against LAK-cell lysis

We have investigated the in vitro interaction of LAK cells with 20 different human tumor cell lines freshly isolated from colorectal carcinoma (CRC) specimens. Three steps of LAK cell/tumor cell interaction, namely adherence, infiltration and lysis, have been studied. All are important for the cytotoxic effect of LAK cells against solid tumors: LAK-cell adherence was studied on tumor-cell monolayer cultures, the infiltration capacity of LAK cells using tumor-cell spheroids and the resulting cytotoxic effects of LAK cells against CRC cells grown as spheroids or monolayers. Finally, we correlated the degree of lysis of the CRC cells with their carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) production, the secretion of which varied in a broad range from not detectable to 2,800 ng/day in culture medium. Cytotoxicity experiments showed a good correlation between CEA expression of CRC cells and their resistance against allogeneic LAK cells. Spheroids of CEA-producing cells prevented LAK-cell infiltration resulting in high resistance against LAK-cell lysis. Adhesion of LAK cells on monolayers of CEA-expressing CRC cells was minimal. Our results indicate that CEA expression may be an escape mechanism protecting colon carcinoma cells from an attack by cytotoxic cells.