Activated marrow-infiltrating lymphocytes effectively target plasma cells and their clonogenic precursors

A major limitation of adoptive immunotherapy is the availability of T cells specific for both terminally differentiated tumor cells and their clonogenic precursors. We show here that marrow-infiltrating lymphocytes (MILs) recognize myeloma cells after activation with anti-CD3/CD28 beads with higher frequency than activated peripheral blood lymphocytes from the same patients. Furthermore, activated MILs target both the terminally differentiated CD138⁺ plasma cells and the myeloma precursor as shown by profound inhibition in a tumor clonogenic assay. The presence of antigen in the marrow microenvironment seems to be important for the maintenance of tumor specificity. Taken together, these results highlight the intrinsic tumor specificity of MILs and describe a novel approach for the generation of tumor-specific T-cell populations suitable for adoptive immunotherapy of multiple myeloma.