Author(s)

Jinlu Liu, Taiyi Wu, Minghao Zhang

Corresponding Author

Jinlu Liu

ABSTRACT

Cancer has always been a medical challenge that scientists have been trying to resolve for centuries. After the successful bone marrow transplant which aims to deal with leukemia was developed in 1956, numerous measures including chemotherapy, physical therapy and surgical intervention have taken turns to be tumor fighters. During recent decades, immunotherapy is a hot academic area to step on. Among all promising techniques that has been developed, CAR-T has shown impressive results in treating hematological malignancies and progress in conquering solid tumors clinically. However, clinical trials also showed some drawbacks such as severe side effects (neurotoxicity, cytokine release syndrome, etc.), high cost and resistance in making progress in solid tumors. Here, this review will introduce three emergent CAR-based therapies: CAR-NK, CAR-NKT and CAR-macrophage, as these extensions of CAR-based techniques shed light on further clinical development of CAR strategies. Respectively, the mechanism, evolution, application, and challenges of these three therapies will also be discussed.

KEYWORDS

CAR-based therapies, Cancer immunology, Immunotherapy, B cell malignancy