Non-Viral Sleeping Beauty Transposon Engineered CD19-CAR-NK Cells Show a Safe Genomic Integration Profile and High Antileukemic Efficiency

Background: Natural Killer (NK) cells are known for their high intrinsic cytotoxic capacity. Recently, we and others showed that virally transduced NK cells equipped with a synthetic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) targeting CD19 induced enhanced killing of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that primary NK cells can be engineered using the non-viral Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon/transposase system to stably express a CD19-CAR with a safe genomic integration profile and high anti-leukemic efficiency in vitro and in vivo.