IL-15 Administration Increases Graft Versus Leukemia Activity in Recipients of Haploidentical Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation,

For developing clinically relevant haploidentical transplant models, different hybrid mice with B6 background that share the same haplotype (H2K^b) are used for our murine haploindentical transplant experiments. Lethally irradiated B6D2F1/J (H2K^b/d) mice are transplanted with B6CBAF1/J (H2K^b/k) TCD bone marrow (BM) and T cells at varying doses. Some animals were also given P815 tumor cells on the day of transplant. Administration of IL-15 significantly increased the numbers of CD8+ T and NK cells in the spleen and BM in the T cell depleted model at post-transplant day 28. Infusion of very low dose haploidentical T cells (1×10⁴) with TCD-BM resulted in a conflicting effect on immune reconstitution, i.e. increased T cell numbers, and decreased NK cell population. Post-transplant IL-15 administration also changed this immune reconstitution pattern and significantly increased both T and NK cell numbers in recipients of HI-HSCT. In P815 challenged mice that were transplanted with very low dose T cell added TCD-BM, IL-15 administration significantly increased anti-tumor activity of the graft and improved survival (Figure 1) without increasing GVHD. This effect was observed when IL-15 administration was given at a later time point rather than immediately following transplantation, possibly allowing for more donor cell engraftment and T cell proliferation to take place. IL-15 administration without T cell infusion did not result in any survival improvement. We conclude that in our experimental HI transplant models, IL-15 administration augments anti-tumor effect of the HI-HSCT without increasing GVHD risk, and this effect requires presence of donor derived T cells.