Development of chimeric antigen receptors targeting T-cell malignancies using two structurally different anti-CD5 antigen binding domains in NK and CRISPR-edited T cell lines

Relapsed T-cell malignancies have poor outcomes when treated with chemotherapy, but survival after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) approaches 50%. A limitation to BMT is the difficulty of achieving remission prior to transplant. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has shown successes in B-cell malignancies. This approach is difficult to adapt for the treatment of T-cell disease due to lack of a T-lymphoblast specific antigen and the fratricide of CAR T cells that occurs with T-cell antigen targeting. To circumvent this problem two approaches were investigated. First, a natural killer (NK) cell line, which does not express CD5, was used for CAR expression. Second, CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology was used to knockout CD5 expression in CD5-positive Jurkat T cells and in primary T cells, allowing for the use of CD5-negative T cells for CAR expression. Two structurally distinct anti-CD5 sequences were also tested, i) a traditional immunoglobulin-based single chain variable fragment (scFv) and ii) a lamprey-derived variable lymphocyte receptor (VLR), which we previously showed can be used for CAR-based recognition. Our results show i) both CARs yield comparable T-cell activation and NK cell-based cytotoxicity when targeting CD5-positive cells, ii) CD5-edited CAR-modified Jurkat T cells have reduced self-activation compared to that of CD5-positive CAR-modified T cells, iii) CD5-edited CAR-modified Jurkat T cells have increased activation in the presence of CD5-positive target cells compared to that of CD5-positive CAR-modified T cells, and iv) although modest effects were seen, a mouse model using the CAR-expressing NK cell line showed the scFv-CAR was superior to the VLR-CAR in delaying disease progression.