UCSF

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are a central component of therapy for hematologic malignancies. Widely used mAb agents in multiple myeloma (MM) include daratumumab and elotuzumab. However, not all patients respond to these agents, and resistance is a significant clinical issue. A recently discovered subset of human natural killer (NK) cells lacking expression of FcεRIγ (g-NK cells) was found to have a multifold increase in antibody-dependent effector functions after CD16 crosslinking. In this study, we tested the capacity of g-NK cells to enhance the efficacy of therapeutic mAbs against MM. In vitro, we found that g-NK cells have strikingly superior anti-myeloma cytotoxicity compared with conventional NK (cNK) cells when combined with daratumumab or elotuzumab (∼sixfold; P < .001). In addition, g-NK cells naturally expressed minimal surface CD38 and SLAMF7, which reduced the incidence of therapeutic fratricide. In tumor-naïve murine models, the persistence of g-NK cells in blood and spleen was >10 times higher than that of cNK cells over 31 days (P < .001). In vivo efficacy studies showed that the combination of daratumumab and g-NK cells led to a >99.9% tumor reduction (by flow cytometry analysis) compared with the combination of daratumumab and cNK cells (P < .001). Moreover, treatment with daratumumab and g-NK cells led to complete elimination of myeloma burden in 5 of 7 mice. Collectively, these results underscore the unique ability of g-NK cells to potentiate the activity of therapeutic mAbs and overcome limitations of current off-the-shelf NK cell therapies without the need for cellular irradiation or genetic engineering.