K562 (also known as K-562) is a continuous human leukemia cell line originally isolated from the pleural effusion of a 53-year-old female with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). It is widely used in immunology research as a model for CML, hematopoietic differentiation, and tumor-immune cell interactions.
The K562 cell line is highly undifferentiated and multipotential; it can be differentiated into early precursors of the monocytic, granulocytic, and erythrocytic series under appropriate conditions. In culture, cells grow as round, non-adherent cells in suspension.
The cells express negligible levels of MHC class I and class II on their surface, exhibit little expression of several other immunologically relevant molecules (e.g. PD-L1, CD40, CD40L), and do not endogenously express major tumor-associated target antigens (e.g. CD19, CD20, CD22, or BCMA). As such, K562 cells serve as a useful platform for expressing exogenous target antigens for studies of antigen-specific oncology therapeutics, and can be used to generate artificial antigen presenting cells for immune assays.
K562 cells are sensitive to natural killer cells and commonly used as target cells in natural killer cell assays. Due to their relative ease of culture, engineered variants expressing exogenous target antigens are also frequently used as target cells in CAR-T cell killing assays.
In vivo, K562 are tumorigenic in immunodeficient Nude, SCID, and NSG mice. Subcutaneous inoculation produces a localized, palpable tumor. Intravenous inoculation is used to establish a disseminated leukemia-like model that includes the blood, bone marrow, and spleen, as well as other tissues.
Imanis K562 reporter cell lines can be used for in vitro or in vivo research. The luciferase (Fluc) and green fluorescence protein (GFP) reporters facilitate easy quantitation of cells for in vitro assays, while luciferase can also be used for tracking tumor growth non-invasively in living animals through bioluminescence imaging.
Our K562-Fluc-TAA cell lines overexpress luciferase as well as oncology target antigens of interest for immunotherapy development, including human and cynomolgus macaque CD19, CD20, or BCMA alone or in different combinations. The absence of these markers on the parental K562-Fluc-Puro cell line facilitates target-specific studies using antigen positive and negative cell panels.
Our cells are generated by lentiviral vector transduction, ensuring high, constitutive expression of the transgenes. The lentiviral vectors used for these transductions are self-inactivating (SIN) vectors in which the viral enhancer and promoter has been deleted. This increases the biosafety of the lentiviral vectors by preventing mobilization of replication competent viruses.
Note that in vivo growth kinetics vary with cell dose, passage history, viability, implantation site, mouse sub-strain, sex, age, and immune status. Consequently, pilot experiments to develop the tumor model in vivo are recommended for specific protocols, and should not be viewed as universal characteristics of all K562 cell lines.
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