ACTL Anti-Cancer Cellular Immunotherapy

    Most types of cancerous conditions can be treated with the ACTL tumor targeted  immunotherapy, unfortunately T-cell lymphoma cannot be accepted for at current stage for technical reasons. A patient can be accepted for ACTL treatment once the following requirements are met:

    • The MHC-I (HLA-I) is positive
    • At least one type of tumor-associated antigen presents positive
    • Normal renal and liver function
    • No severe anemia
    • Stopped chemotherapy and radiotherapy for over 3 weeks, white blood cell (WBC) count in normal range
    • Minimized cancer burden
    • No history of severe allergy

    Possible Improvements

    ACTL cancer immunotherapy targets the tumor cells and stops them from further spreading or destroy them. It is more effective to receive ACTL treatment after the surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It also reverses the drug-resistance, patients may respond again to radiation and chemotherapy after the ACTL therapy. It is important to note that improvement rate greatly depends on the nature and level of the disease at the time of treatment. And as with any cancer treatment methods, improvement may vary from one patient to another and cannot be guaranteed.

    * As with any cell based treatment, improvements may vary from a patient to another and cannot be guaranteed.

    ACTL refers to AAV-DC-CTL (adeno-associated virus, dendritic cells, cytotoxic T lymphocytes). The treatment is dendritic cells (DC) and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) based.

    ACTL tumor targeted immunotherapy technology uses non-pathogenic adeno-associated virus (AAV) to infect the monocytes (Mo) in the peripheral blood. After being induced with cytokines, the monocytes will transform to the powerful antigen presenting dendritic cells (DCs).

    The tumor antigen-specificity possessed during the process is called targeting ability. Therefore, the CTLs activated by the rAAV-infected DCs are able to eliminate the tumor cells which present positive for one or several types of tumor related antigens, the cells present negative for such antigens will be not affected.

    Advantages of ACTL Treatment

    Improved Targeting Ability

    After genetic modification, the rAAV can carry tumor specific antigens to infect the DC and activate the attacking ability of the CTLs. These CTLs are tumor antigen targeted, cause no harm to the normal cells.

    A patient is qualified to receive the ACTL immunotherapy as long as the treatment requirement is met. Unlike the immunotherapies in early ages, the cell cultivation process of the ACTL immunotherapy has been upgraded to fulfill the needs in clinical treatment. The process was simplified and infection efficiency was improved that with only one transfection, over 90% of the dendritic cells (DCs) will be infected with the antigens carried by the AAV. The attacking ability of the CTLs will be induced and significantly enhanced by these DCs.

    Reversibility of Drug Resistance

    The ACTL immunotherapy can not only reverse the drug-resistance developed during the hormone treatment, but possibly reverse the tumor cells’ resistance to the molecular targeted drugs, such as Iressa and Avastin.

    Immunity Enhancement

    ACTL immunotherapy can increase the IL-12 and IFN-y’s expression levels of the DCs, in contrary, the expression levels of IL-10 can be decreased, the mixture of rAAV-infected DC and lymphocytes will increase the number of the DC8+T cells, the number of the CD4+T cells will be decreased. Therefore the CTL’s attacking ability will be enhanced, and the immunity will be improved to fight against cancer.AAV

    NIH and FDA is the US have approved that it is safe to use AAV in the clinical treatment after 20 years of worldwide research. The AAV is a non-virulent virus, it doesn’t cause any physiological or pathological changes after its transfection to human.

    Treatment Process

    • Blood collection from patient’s vein
    • Centrifuge and get the peripheral blood monocytes (PBMC)
    • Lymphocytes and monocytes are separated. The monocytes will be infected by the rAAV, and cytokines will be added to induce the production of the dendritic cells (DCs)
    • Culture mature DC and lymphocytes together to induce the T cells
    • Infuse activated T cells to patient’s body to complete the treatment. The entire process takes about 12 to 18 days.