Hypoxic NK cells and methods therefor
Detection of under-expression of selected genes in NK cells is used to confirm a hypoxic tumor microenvironment that is ordinarily suppressive with respect to ADCC and cytotoxic cell killing of NK cells. Most notably, while hypoxia is known to upregulate HIF-1α and genes under the control of HIF-1α, hypoxia in a tumor microenvironment led to under-expression of selected genes, including HIF-1α. Thus, gene expression analysis of certain genes on NK cells can be used to detect conditions in a tumor that would indicate use of haNK cells.
1. A method of treating a tumor in a human patient having a hypoxic tumor microenvironment, the method comprising:
isolating natural killer (NK) cells from a blood sample taken from the patient;
quantifying expression of at least one hypoxia-related gene in the isolated NK cells, wherein the hypoxia related gene is HIF-1α, and wherein the NK cells under-express the at least one hypoxia-related gene relative to an expression level of the at least one hypoxia-related gene in an NK cell at normoxic conditions; and
administering an effective amount of allogenic NK92 cells expressing a high-affinity variant CD16 (haNK) cells to the patient whose isolated NK cells under-express the at least one hypoxia-related gene.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the NK cells are isolated using magnetic separation and an antibody specific to NK cells.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein quantifying expression is performed using quantitative rtPCR or RNAseq.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one hypoxia-related gene is under-expressed by a log 2-fold change of at least 2.0.