Research Status of T Cells Directly Reprogramming to Other Immune Cells

The T cells, which are often applied to cellular immunotherapy, are terminally differentiated circulating lymphocytes. In current cellular immunotherapy, the patient’s T cells, which are activated, amplified or genetically engineered in vitro, are injected back into the patient. Although this strategy have been proved effective in cancers such as melanoma, lymphocytic leukemia and B-cell lymphoma, the majority of T cells amplified in vitro are effector T cells. The effector T cells have limited viability and are difficult to maintain their antitumor effects for a long time. Therefore, less differentiated T cells are the key to improving cellular immunotherapy. At present, highly differentiated T cells can be directly induced into less differentiated T cells and non-T lineage immune cells through cell reprogramming. At the same time, the induced immune cells have strong proliferation and antitumor ability, which is helpful to develop new and more effective cellular immunotherapy. This article firstly introduces the development and differentiation of T cells, focuses on the research progress on direct reprogramming of T cells into different immune cells, and further expounds the functions of the induced immune cells, so as to provide a reference for the further in-depth research and application in cellular immunotherapy.

CSTR: 32200.14.cjcb.2023.02.0017