Expansion, persistence and efficacy of donor memory-like NK cells for the treatment of post-transplant relapse

Relapse of AML occurs in up to 50% of patients after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT) and heralds an extremely poor prognosis. Cytokine induced memory-like (CIML) human NK cells have enhanced ability to recognize and kill leukemia targets. We initiated a phase I trial of CIML NK cells to treat patients with relapsed myeloid malignancies after haplo-HCT (NCT04024761). Transcriptional profiling analysis by scRNAseq were used to characterize the immunophenotypes of infused NK cells post cell adoptive transfer and as well as their interactions with tumor cells. Overall design: Patients with relapsed myeloid disease, including AML, MDS, myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN), or BPDCN following haplo-HCT were eligible to be treated on an ongoing single center phase I dose de-escalation clinical trial of CIML NK cell therapy. CIML NK cells were derived from the same donor who provided stem cells for the original transplant. PBMC were collected and cryopreserved at day 0, day +7, day +21–28, day +42, day +60, day +100, and relapse time points after infusion.