Ex Vivo Expansion of Th2-Polarizing Immunotherapeutic iNKT Cells from Human Peripheral Blood

iNKT cells, classified as innate lymphocytes with invariant TCRs, have been highlighted as a putative, "off-the-shelf" cellular immunotherapeutic strategy for the treatment of malignant and nonmalignant diseases. However, their paucity in human blood limits their immunotherapeutic applications. Herein we describe a rigorously optimized 21-day ex vivo expansion method to achieve log-fold increases in immunotherapeutic human iNKT cells.