Enhancement of cytokine production and differentiation from sensitized EL4 T-cell by using atmospheric plasma irradiation

In recent years, immunotherapy for cancer has become popular as an alternative of conventional methods. However, the period required to culture immune cells up to the enough activity for cancer treatment is as long as 3 weeks. To reduce this period, the purpose of this study is to activate immune cells with plasma and enhance the release of cytokines and differentiation from precursor cells. Oxygen plasma generated by the torch-type atmospheric DBD was supplied to the cells. The oxygen gas flows at 0.6 L/m with discharge voltage 4.2 kV. The EL4 T-cell that is one of kinds of lymphocytes was used, and the initial cell concentration is 5×10⁵ cells/ml. After 24 h from plasma irradiation, T-cells are sensitized and after another 24 h, amounts of IFN-γ and IL-4, which are kinds of cytokine released by Th1 and Th2 cells, respectively, are measured using the ELISA kits. The amount of IFN-γ released by one cell was increased by 2 times, which is equivalent to the total cell number increase by the plasma irradiation. The amount of IL-4 released by one cell was increased by 10 times. Therefore, the ability of the IL-4 production by EL4 T-cell was enhanced by the plasma irradiation. This result suggests that EL4 T-cells were differentiated to Th2 cells, which is one kind of CD4+ T-cells.