Immunotherapy of Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Magnetic PD-1 Peptide-Imprinted Polymer Nanocomposite and Natural Killer Cells

• Published in: Biomolecules (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 9; no. 11; p. 651
• Main Authors: Lee, Mei-Hwa, Liu, Kai-Hsi, Thomas, James L., Chen, Jyun-Ren, Lin, Hung-Yin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI 25.10.2019; MDPI AG
• Subjects: human hepatoma cells; immunotherapy; magnetic nanoparticles; natural killer cells; peptide-imprinted polymer; programmed cell death protein 1 (pd-1); peptide-imprinted polymer; natural killer cells; human hepatoma cells; magnetic nanoparticles; programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1); immunotherapy
• ISSN: 2218-273X; 2218-273X
• DOI: 10.3390/biom9110651

Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is a biomarker on the surface of cells with a role in promoting self-tolerance by suppressing the inflammatory activity of T cells. In this work, one peptide of PD-1 was used as the template for molecular imprinting to form magnetic peptide-imprinted poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) composite nanoparticles (MPIP NPs). The nanoparticles were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis, and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) analysis. Natural killer 92 (NK-92) cells were added to these composite nanoparticles and then incubated with human hepatoma (HepG2) cells. The viability and the apoptosis pathway of HepG2 were then studied using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), respectively. These nanoparticles were found to significantly enhance the activity of natural killer cells toward HepG2 cells by increasing the expression of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), caspase 8, and especially caspase 3.