A three-dimensional immune-oncology model for studying in vitro primary human NK cell cytotoxic activity

PLoS One. 2022 Mar 21;17(3):e0264366. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264366. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising therapeutic approach for treating several forms of cancer. Adoptive cell transfer of immune cells, such as natural killer (NK) cells, provides a powerful therapeutic potential against tumor cells. In the past decades, two-dimensional (2D) tumor models have been used to investigate the effectiveness of immune cell killing. However, the 2D tumor models exhibit less structural complexity and cannot recapitulate the physiological condition of the tumor microenvironment. Thus, the effectiveness of immune cells against tumor cells using these models cannot fully be translated to clinical studies. In order to gain a deeper insight into immune cell-tumor interaction, more physiologically relevant in vivo-like three-dimensional (3D) tumor models have been developed. These 3D tumor models can mimic the dynamic cellular activities, making them a much closer representation of the in vivo tumor profiles. Here, we describe a simple and effective protocol to study the cytotoxic activity of primary human NK cells toward the 3D tumor spheroids. Our protocol includes isolation and expansion of human NK cells, labeling and formation of tumor spheroids, co-culture of NK cells and tumor spheroids, and evaluation of cytotoxic activity using a confocal microscope. This protocol is also applicable to other types of tumors and immune cells.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adoptive Transfer / methods
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Humans
  • Immunotherapy
  • Killer Cells, Natural
  • Neoplasms* / therapy
  • Spheroids, Cellular*
  • Tumor Microenvironment

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Thailand Research Fund (grant no. RSA6280090 to MW), Siriraj Research Fund, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University (grant number (IO) R016333015 to MW), the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT): NRCT5-RGJ63012-126 to NT and MW, and the Distinguished Research Professor Grant (NRCT 808/2563 to MW), the Program Management Unit for Human Resources & Institutional Development, Research and Innovation (grant no. B05F630080 to MW) and Mahidol University under the New Discovery and Frontier Research Grant to MW. NT is supported by Siriraj Graduate Scholarship, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University. MW is supported by Chalermphrakiat Grant, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University. The funders had and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.