Can Low-Oxygen Conditions Improve TIL Therapy for Kidney Cancer?
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte, or TIL, therapy is an immunotherapy that uses the patient's own cells to fight cancers. Immune cells called TILs are removed from the patient’s tissue and grown exponentially in the lab. The TILs are then reinfused into the patient to destroy the tumor.
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved TIL for treating advanced melanoma.
While TIL therapy has demonstrated notable success in metastatic melanoma, its application across other solid tumor types, including genitourinary kidney cancers, has been hindered by limited efficacy, durability of responses and the lack of tumor specificity.
In a study presented at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Moffitt Cancer Center genitourinary oncology specialist Jad Chahoud, MD, and researchers Marine Potez, PhD and Shari Pilon-Thomas, PhD, aimed to improve the success of TIL for kidney cancers by using controlled hypoxic conditions, or environments with low levels of oxygen.
Jad Chahoud, MD
“Addressing these challenges is crucial to unlocking TIL therapy's full potential as an effective and safe immunotherapeutic option for kidney cancers,” Chahoud said.
Normally, TILs are grown in an environment containing an oxygen level of about 20%. In this environment, researchers found TILs weren’t effective in destroying kidney cancer cells.
This study investigated whether growing these immune cells under controlled low-oxygen (hypoxic) conditions similar to the tumor environment could enhance their ability to attack cancer cells.
The group found that in an environment with a 5% oxygen level, the TILs were able to grow, expand and kill tumors more effectively.
“The TILs expanded in hypoxic conditions and showed a more robust immune response compared to those grown in normal oxygen conditions,” Chahoud said. “We were able to expand TILs from most patient samples, and these TILs developed into memory-type T-cells, which could help maintain long-term immune protection against clear cell renal cell carcinoma.”
Although the study’s findings provide a promising opportunity to revisit TIL therapy in renal cell carcinoma, Chahoud says further studies must be done moving forward.
