Increasing the safety and efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy

• Main Authors: Hua Li, Yangbing Zhao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-04-01
• Series: Protein & Cell
• Subjects: chimeric antigen receptors; cancer adoptive immunotherapy; T lymphocytes; gene therapy; gene editing
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13238-017-0411-9

Abstract Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is a promising cancer treatment that has recently been undergoing rapid development. However, there are still some major challenges, including precise tumor targeting to avoid off-target or “on-target/off-tumor” toxicity, adequate T cell infiltration and migration to solid tumors and T cell proliferation and persistence across the physical and biochemical barriers of solid tumors. In this review, we focus on the primary challenges and strategies to design safe and effective CAR T cells, including using novel cutting-edge technologies for CAR and vector designs to increase both the safety and efficacy, further T cell modification to overcome the tumor-associated immune suppression, and using gene editing technologies to generate universal CAR T cells. All these efforts promote the development and evolution of CAR T cell therapy and move toward our ultimate goal—curing cancer with high safety, high efficacy, and low cost.