Delivery Solutions For Immune Cells

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Genetic manipulation of blood cells is key to understanding and developing treatments for a broad range of diseases such as leukemia, solid-tumor cancers, and HIV infection. Recent progress in immunotherapy for cancer and infectious diseases, along with advancements in techniques such as genome editing, have stimulated growing interest in experimentation with blood cells. However, the path to discovery is not without challenges. Even as more researchers pursue breakthroughs, the difficulty of delivering molecules into these cells continues to be an impediment to more rapid advancement [1].

Transfection of hematopoietic cells and circulating blood cells is generally difficult, time-consuming, and expensive [1,2]. T lymphocytes, which are particularly interesting because of their therapeutic promise, have proven to be refractory to delivery of DNA and RNA by standard reagent-based methods; consequently, transduction with lentiviruses is now the most widely used approach for introducing nucleic acids into T cells [3-7]. Even though more efficient lentiviral techniques are being developed, safety concerns pertaining to human therapeutic use have yet to be fully addressed. Researchers are exploring alternative physical delivery approaches such as electroporation [8-11]. 

The Invitrogen Neon Transfection System delivers DNA, RNA, and protein into cells while avoiding the challenges faced by reagent and viral methods. By using the Neon system to optimize electroporation conditions and cell density, we achieved greater than 80% transfection efficiency with a number of blood cell lines as well as primary T cells (Figure 1). We were also able to successfully utilize the Neon system for genomic engineering with the CRISPR/Cas9 system in multiple blood cell lines, and achieve greater than 90% genomic cleavage efficiency in primary human T cells.

The Neon transfection system streamlines the electroporation process for greater transfection efficiency and decreased hands-on time. Compared to standard cuvette-based electroporation, the innovative design of the Neon transfection system’s tip increases transfection efficiency and cell viability by exposing samples to a more uniform electric field with minimal pH change, less ion formation, and negligible heat generation.

Features

• Small footprint: benchtop design that fits inside tissue culture hood
• Flexible: accommodates 1 x 10e4 to 5 x 10e6 cells per reaction in a sample volume of 10 μL or 100 μL
• User-friendly: touch screen interface for easy programming of electroporation parameters
• Customizable: preprogrammed 24-well optimization protocols and open platform for additional protocols
  
• Proven in immune cells: high DNA and RNA delivery efficiency in primary T cells and immune cell lines
   

The unique properties of mRNA make it preferable to DNA for transfection (Table 1) when working with difficult cell models. Since nuclear entry is not necessary with mRNA, transfection efficiency is generally higher. Additional benefits are that mRNA transfection is transient, and time to protein expression is faster than with DNA. The results below indicate the advantages of using mRNA for gene expression experiments with difficult-to-transfect immune cell models (Table 2).

Table 1. Results from DNA delivery by the Neon Transfection System.

Table 2. Comparison between mRNA and DNA delivery by the Neon Transfection System.

The ability to transfect primary T cells is vital for further understanding of these cells and their functions. Optimized delivery to T cells is also important in new areas of clinical research such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) cancer therapy. Introduction of mRNA and DNA by electroporation with the Neon system produced over 90% and 80% transfected cells, respectively (Figure 2).

Recently, electroporation was used to facilitate genome editing of primary human T lymphocytes by delivering preformed ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes, formed by Cas9 protein and gRNA, into CD4+ T cells, allowing both knockout and knock-in modifications of the HIV-related CXCR4 and PD-1 genes [12]. CRISPR protein streamlines cell engineering by eliminating transcription and translation in the cell (Figure 3). Transfection of Invitrogen GeneArt Platinum Cas9 Nuclease and in vitro transcribed gRNA into cell lines by electroporation resulted in high genomic cleavage efficiency, as shown in Table 3.

Figure 3. Advantages of CRISPR/Cas9 system.
 

Table 3. Improved results from Cas9/gRNA complex delivery by the Neon Transfection System.

Table 4. Published cleavage efficiencies.

Finding ways to meet the challenges of introducing nucleic acids and proteins into blood cells extends the capabilities of scientists working to pioneer many exciting areas of research. The data presented here demonstrate that the Neon system facilitates efficient transfection of a wide range of blood cell lines as well as primary blood cells while providing for uncomplicated optimization of electroporation conditions. When the Neon Transfection System was used to deliver mRNA, 75–98% cells were transfected. In addition, published data show that delivery of DNA, RNA, and protein by electroporation for genomic editing has resulted in high genomic cleavage efficiency in many cell lines as well as primary T lymphocytes. Compared to lentiviral transfection, the Neon system is simpler, faster, and less costly. For primary T cells, the demonstrated effectiveness of the Neon system expands what until recently had been a markedly limited range of available delivery options. For all types of blood cells, transfection with the Neon system is a highly recommended alternative to the currently used standard approaches.

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