"Standardization of mRNA transfection of Natural Killer cells for immune therapy purposes. "

Abstract

Human natural killer (NK) cells have received much interest due to significant progress in understanding their function and some promising findings in tumor therapy. NK cells are cytotoxic lymphocytes that have the ability to kill malignant or virally infected cells. Several receptors control their activity, transmitting either activating or inhibitory signals, triggering NK cell responses while assuring self-tolerance. The genetic enhancement of their effector capabilities is needed to increase the tumor-killing activity of NK cells. Many techniques of transfection have been examined for this purpose. This study describes the process of optimizing mRNA delivery into commonly accessible NK cell lines, NK-92 and KHYG-1, using electroporation and lipofection as transfection techniques. Based on the outcomes, there is a vital difference between the two transfection approaches, with lipofection being an inefficient transfection method for both tested cell lines and with electroporation enabling over 90% and 51% efficiency in the KHYG-1 and NK92 cells line, respectively. Finally, an optimized protocol for electroporation and lipofection was used to transfect primary NK cells.