In vivo CRISPR screening in CD8 T cells with AAV–Sleeping Beauty hybrid vectors identifies membrane targets for improving immunotherapy for glioblastoma
Menée à l'aide de modèles murins de glioblastome, cette étude met en évidence l'intérêt d'une approche méthodologique, utilisant un virus adéno-associé comportant la transposase "Sleeping Beauty", son transposon et un ARN guide, pour identifier des cibles membranaires au niveau des lymphocytes T CD8+ et améliorer l'efficacité d'immunothérapies
Targeting membrane proteins could improve the efficacy of T cell–based immunotherapies. To facilitate the identification of T cell targets, we developed a hybrid genetic screening system where the Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon and single guide RNA cassette are nested in an adeno-associated virus (AAV). SB-mediated genomic integration of the single guide RNA cassette enables efficient gene editing in primary murine T cells as well as a screen readout. We performed in vivo AAV–SB-CRISPR screens for membrane protein targets in CD8+ T cells in mouse models of glioblastoma (GBM). We validated screen hits by demonstrating that adoptive transfer of CD8+ T cells with Pdia3, Mgat5, Emp1 or Lag3 gene editing enhances the survival of GBM-bearing mice in both syngeneic and T-cell receptor transgenic models. Transcriptome profiling, single cell sequencing, cytokine assays and T cell signaling analysis showed that Pdia3 editing in T cells enhances effector functions. Engineered PDIA3 mutant EGFRvIII chimeric antigen T cells are more potent in antigen-specific killing of human GBM cells.