Arming Immune Cell Therapeutics with Polymeric Prodrugs

Engineered immune cells are an exciting therapeutic modality which survey and attack tumors. Backpacking strategies exploit cell targeting capabilities for delivery of drugs to combat tumors and their immune-suppressive environments. Here, a new platform for arming cell therapeutics through dual receptor and polymeric prodrug engineering has been developed. Macrophage and T cell therapeutics are engineered to express a bioorthogonal single chain variable fragment receptor. The receptor binds a fluorescein ligand that directs cell loading with ligand-tagged polymeric prodrugs, termed “drugamers”. The fluorescein ligand facilitated stable binding of drugamer to engineered macrophages over 10 days with 80% surface retention. Drugamers also incorporated prodrug monomers of the phosphoinositide-3-kinase inhibitor, PI-103. The extended release of PI-103 from the drugamer sustained anti-proliferative activity against a glioblastoma cell line compared to the parent drug. The versatility and modularity of this cell arming system was demonstrated by loading T cells with a second fluorescein-drugamer. This drugamer incorporated a small molecule trans-gene activator, CMP8, that switched-on a degron-tagged gene circuit to provide temporal regulation of engineered T cell protein expression. These results demonstrate that this bioorthogonal receptor and drugamer system can be used to arm multiple immune cell classes with both anti-tumor and transgene-activating small molecule prodrugs.