Czechowicz A, Palchaudhuri R, Scheck A, Hu Y, Hoggatt J, Saez B, Pang WW, Mansour MK, Tate TA, Chan YY, Walck E, Wernig G, Shizuru JA, Winau F, Scadden DT, Rossi DJ.
2019.
Selective hematopoietic stem cell ablation using CD117-antibody-drug-conjugates enables safe and effective transplantation with immunity preservation.
Nature communications.
10(1):617.
Pubmed: 30728354
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-08201-x
Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a curative therapy for blood and immune diseases with potential for many settings beyond current standard-of-care. Broad HSCT application is currently precluded largely due to morbidity and mortality associated with genotoxic irradiation or chemotherapy conditioning. Here we show that a single dose of a CD117-antibody-drug-conjugate (CD117-ADC) to saporin leads to > 99% depletion of host HSCs, enabling rapid and efficient donor hematopoietic cell engraftment. Importantly, CD117-ADC selectively targets hematopoietic stem cells yet does not cause clinically significant side-effects. Blood counts and immune cell function are preserved following CD117-ADC treatment, with effective responses by recipients to both viral and fungal challenges. These results suggest that CD117-ADC-mediated HSCT pre-treatment could serve as a non-myeloablative conditioning strategy for the treatment of a wide range of non-malignant and malignant diseases, and might be especially suited to gene therapy and gene editing settings in which preservation of immunity is desired.
