Engineered Cell Based Therapeutics


Saveetha Dental College, Saveetha University, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Biochemistry, Saveetha Dental College, Saveetha University, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 9567263096

Abstract

Engineered cell-based therapeutics is having a great commitment in the field of treatment of human diseases. Scientific studies revealed that cell-based therapeutics play a key role in the treatment of cancers which can be an alternative for traditional immunotherapy. Even though there have been promising results, and the potential side effects resulting in mortality forced the scientists to impart regulations in the current therapies. These are evident in the growing frame of the literature of synthetic biology. Synthetic Biology empowered these new approaches to several applications in the medical field, including the development of bioengineered cell-based immunotherapies, peculiarly T-cell engineering with tumour-targeting receptors and the Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cells. The specific applications of this bioengineering of cells include direct injection of cells, merging the cells with a biomaterial scaffold in an in vitro or situ condition, or the biomaterial scaffold implantation alone which can induce surrounding cells leading to tissue restoration. Hence the aim of this review article is to highlight the various aspects of engineered cell-based therapeutics.

Keywords

Engineered cell, immunotherapy, autoimmune disease, synthetic biology, therapeutics

Introduction

Tissue engineering is a technique which involves the tissue function restoration by using living cells. The specific applications of this bioengineering of cells include direct injection of cells, merging the cells with a biomaterial scaffold in an in vitro or situ condition, or even the biomaterial scaffold implantation alone which can induce surrounding cells leading to tissue restoration (Matsoukis, 2006). Cell-based therapeutics furnished its own new and unique approaches towards the treatment of many deadly diseases and disorders, which also encompasses the CAR-T cell therapy approval for leukemia (Takagi, 2020).

Engineered cell-based therapeutics can be defined as therapy which utilizes engineered skill-based systematics in which cellular material is injured, or it is transplanted into a patient. The genesis of this cell therapy can be traced long back to the nineteenth century when Charles Brown made an attempt to stop aging by injecting the animal testicle extracts from a large scale. The most common cell-based transplantation or therapeutics was the bone marrow transplants. In general, for patients presenting damaged or destroyed bone marrow in which chemotherapy is a major example for based therapeutics in which bone marrow-derived cells can be infused in the patient's bloodstream and thus the injected cells are able to move towards the infected cell or bone marrow and then integrated and proliferate and recover or establish its biological function. (Binet, Ezzi, Meagher-Villemure, & Roessingh, 2020).

Cell-based therapeutics with the help of engineered cell-based systematics travelled a long way to modern cell culture polystyrene. Huge efforts have been taken in the industry with respect to the quality as well as reproducibility of the product. This technology involves the immediate separation of cells from their tissue microenvironment. Then they are placed on plastic in the presence of large amounts of saltwater, additives and also even fata calf serum (Speir, 2020). This review tried to emphasize various strategies associated with the engineered cell-based therapeutics with its applications.

Level of Immunotherapies in Engineered Cell Therapies

The ability of the human immune system to fight against cancer or other deadly disorders is the driving force behind the development of T cell engineering (Maikoo et al., 2020). Nowadays, researchers are going on in search of developing drugs against various cancers. Thyroid cancer is the most widespread endocrine cancer (Ma, Karunakaran, Veeraraghavan, Mohan, & Li, 2019). Glioma is the prime cause of cancer in adolescent people and it accounts for about 80% of all malignant tumours (Li et al., 2020).

Globally, breast cancer is becoming a principal cause of morbidity and mortality; however its impact is even more significant in developing countries (Gan et al., 2019). Studies proved that diabetic women are more prone to post-menopausal breast cancer than non-diabetic older women (Ponnulakshmi, Shyamaladevi, Vijayalakshmi, & Selvaraj, 2019). Naturally occurring medicinal plants can inhibit the growth of various cancers. Antioxidants have the potential to reduce the risk of cancer (Ramya, Priya, & Gayathri, 2018). Adiponectin is considered to be one of the key factors for obesity and it is believed to be an important link of the connection between obesity and breast cancer (Mohan, Veeraraghavan, & Jainu, 2015; Shukri, Vishnupriya, Gayathri, & Mohan, 2016).

Natural products are used widely nowadays to avoid the various side effects caused by carcinogenic drugs (Menon, Priya, & Gayathri, 2016; Rengasamy, Jebaraj, Veeraraghavan, & Mohan, 2016). The use of traditional and alternative medicine in various diseases, including cancer, is documented in many studies (Wu et al., 2019). Previous studies have demonstrated that 4-shogaol from ginger may be a novel anticancer agent for the treatment of metastasis in breast cancer (Chen et al., 2019). Garcinol has also shown strong activity against breast cancer and leukemia (Jainu, Priya, & Mohan, 2018). Bionanotechnology has a pivotal role in the development of a novel therapy in the treatment of cancer (Wang et al., 2019).

The study conducted by JC Mottram and Sidney russ during the 20th century revealed that rat sarcoma (cancer tumours) was rejected by rats which were induced by cell-based therapeutics by removing the tumour irradiating and then reinjected into the body of rat (Yang et al., 2020). As time passed by, the innate immune cells of patients became the upcoming therapy and then came the use of CAR-T cell therapies which are nowadays available. It was observed that the patient-derived cells were used and the first observed to kill tumour cells in humans. These studies proved successfully that cellular immunity plays a key role in the destruction of tumor cells but without a mechanism for target recognition and that means to generate T cells was also a tough task during that period (Sun & Geissmann, 2020).

CAR-T was generated after a tumor antigen specificity and is infused into a patient, however many obstacles come across whether these cells were efficiently and successfully targeted and accumulate in the tumor and exert its antitumor effects (Yao et al., 2020). In the course of these processes, the adherence of CAR-T calls to the endothelial cells and initiation of chemokine-chemokine receptor interactions are important to facilitate their movements into antigen rich regions.

T cell infiltration into tumor lesions also enhanced by blocking the endothelin B receptor. CART- cells are injected with the help of oncolytic adenoviruses processes for overcoming the physical barriers as well as for getting efficient tumor control (Li et al., 2020). The successful performance of combination therapy was done using the delivery of gold nanoparticles for PTT therapy and tumour necrosis was done for immunotherapy. The antitumor effect was enhanced by the combined effect of gold nanoparticles and TNF (Ke et al., 2019).

Stem cell Therapy

Stem cells are the raw materials of the body. These specialized cells are having specialized functions, which are prepared in the laboratory (Laurent et al., 2020). They divide to form daughter cells, and they can differentiate into several cell types or all cells of the body depending on their origin and ability. Stem cell transplantation and also that its derivatives are from the endogenous stem cells (Gmnder, Brandenberger, Buser, Pohl, & Ritz, 2020).

Transplantation of stem cells has provided a valuable contribution to the clinical improvements and also to other mechanisms. The pluripotent stem cells originated from embryos, which are used in research nowadays. The pre implanted embryos of only a few days old contain 10-15% pluripotent stem cells (Inserm and INSERM 2020). The pluripotent stem cells can be separated and cultured on a layer of feeder cells, to yield unknown cells for many rounds of proliferation and which maintain their pluripotency. A recent study conducted by two different groups of scientists succeeded in reverting the adult cells to its pluripotent state that exhibited the same characteristics of embryonic stem cells like proliferation, morphology and gene expression (Fluge, Lehmann, & Moe, 2020). The definitive direction of stem cell differentiation into specific types of cells is still a big challenge for scientists. They use virtual alphabet soup of incubation factors towards the factor in order to denote them. Scientists strongly believe that stem cell therapy can enhance the function of the body by incorporation of newly generated stem cells to produce greater adhesion.

Immunosuppressive drugs are required for increasing the life span of the cell while using pluripotent cells. Rapid proliferation and yield of a higher number of useful cells are the advantages of pluripotent stem cells (Hoque et al., 2020). The intestinal stem cells are present at the base of crypts, where they are sustained in a specific microenvironment which help to conserve the multipotency to allow the generation of all epithelial cell lineages from the differentiation of progenitor cells (Jebaraj, Jebaraj, & Kumar, 2015).

Therapeutic Strategies

Therapeutic strategies are not dependent on the treatment duration, the theoretical orientation of the therapist, personnel and psychopathological differences (Khan et al., 2020). They also help to rectify the self-invading ways of thinking that block the coherent self-cell formation. At last, the most important step in the attempts to create motivation for therapists (Regulski, 2018). These attempts also establish therapeutic relationship and structure which is needed for the efficient use of specific interventions which is the second component of treatment (Siqueira, 2011). Priority is given for creating and maintaining the alliance of therapists because the collaborations in the therapeutic relationships which are supportive and the key to manage the process to be done. Majority of the treatments highlight the importance of a collaborative relationship, including psychoanalytic theory and cognitive theory. Epidermal growth factors also have a key role in molecular therapeutics for head and neck carcinoma (Rengasamy, Venkataraman, Veeraraghavan, & Jainu, 2018). Many factors hinder therapeutic strategies. Relationship skills needed for collaborative work are lacking in many patients. The outcome of patients has improved significantly in the past decade with the incorporation of the immunomodulatory drugs. Considering nearly all patients relapse, it remains still an active area of investigation. This article in hands provides an overview of the therapeutic strategies in the treatment of various diseases.

T Cell Based Therapies

Since CD28 stimulation and activeness, it is critical for the T Cell activation as there is greater interest in CDD8 as a target for immunotherapy approaches. Acellular biomaterials are capable of stimulating the local environment for repairing tissues without any scientific or regulatory challenges for T cell-based therapies on a large scale (Yoon, Kim, Kwon, Hwang, & Kim, 2020). There has been a great understanding of the mechanism of the internal tissue repair, which takes a step further in designing the application of biomaterials present. T Cell therapies used from tissue repair, with the help of cartilage and cardiac tissue as an example which was used in the study of human translation in T cell-based therapies (Wilson et al., 2020). As this yields as well as our understanding on the role of biomaterials like T cells in healing cascade continues to evolve, new therapies are likely to move from laboratory to clinic (D'Amour et al., 2006). T cell therapies, such as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, give an increase in the melanoma cells (Wu et al., 2019).

Cell Based Therapies

This therapy involves the transplantation of human cells for repairing damaged tissue or cells. With the help of advanced technologies, new innovative products and endless imagination, various kinds of cells can be used for the treatment of a variety of diseases. Cell-based therapies have contributed largely to the welfare of the patients. A general of 1342 active mobile-based remedy clinical trials have been identified and characterized, based totally on cell type, target identity and also primarily based on trial phase. For facilitating the income translation and future process development, various technologies have been determined and assessed (Zhou & Jin, 2012).

Clinical activity in cell-based therapies is concentrating to a critical mass, with more than 30,000 patients treated with regulatory approved products. It is possible that the synthesis of large size is essential to meet this need will be around trillions of cells, as it is dependent on those requirements per patient and market size is enormous for each indication (Béguelin et al., 2020).

Target on Novel Cell Based Therapies

The CD-19-CAR-NK is a great example of novel cell-based therapies on a human lymphoma xenograft model (Tao et al., 2020). CD19-CAR-NK measured via droplet-based single-cell microfluidics analysis revealed that the majority of the cells are killed by contact with anti CD20 resistant cell lines which require significantly longer contact duration (Zhou et al., 2020). Binding of the ligand and immunoregulatory and chemokine signalling pathways are the basis of cell-based therapies with CD-19-CAR-NK (Bobzin, 2010).

Conclusion

To conclude the significant and accelerated advancement in cell-based therapeutics and emerging examples of cell-based medicines are creating evolutions in the treatment of various diseases as well as inpatient care if this transformation should continue with the help of scientific studies and clinical trials to create more advancements in the field of medicine.