Abstract
Extranodal natural killer (NK)/ T-cell lymphoma, nasal type (ENKL), is an aggressive lymphoma that rapidly disseminates to various sites, resulting in a very poor prognosis. Antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) therapy to target and kill tumor cells induces durable remissions in selected malignancies such as melanomas. As ENKL is invariably infected by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), this lymphoma is a good target of CTL therapy. However, for most tumors, clinical utility is limited because CTL are continuously exposed to viral or tumor antigens and become exhausted. Exploiting fully rejuvenated induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived antigen-specific CTL would be a powerful approach. After we reported the robust antitumor effect and survival advantage of rejuvenated CTL against EBV-infected tumor, we started a preclinical study utilizing this novel immunotherapy to EBV-associated lymphoma. We believe that iPSC-derived rejuvenated CTL therapy targeting EBV will provide a promising salvage therapy for ENKL.
© 2020 The Juntendo Medical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original source is properly credited.
