Adding color to the white bag Exploring the potential of TIL products generated from human solid tumors

TIL therapy uses the patients own immune system to treat cancer lesions. After surgical resection of a tumor lesion, T cells are isolated and expanded ex vivo, to generate tumor reactive TIL products.
In this thesis, we explored the potential to generate tumor reactive TIL products from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and neuroblastoma tumor lesions. NSCLC is an immunogenic tumor type, with a high mutational burden and high immune infiltrate, which mainly affects the adult patient population. On the contrary, neuroblastoma is a non-immunogenic tumor, with a low mutational burden and low immune infiltrate in the tumor, which mainly affects the pediatric patients populations. For both tumor types, we could generate tumor responsive TIL products. However, whereas the αβ T cells were the main effector cells in TIL products generated from NSCLC, γδ T cells were the main effector cells in TIL products generated from neuroblastoma lesions.
This thesis provides new insights in the working mechanism of TIL therapy, and helps to define tumor reactive T cells from different tumor types.