A Critical Review of CAR-T Therapies for Glioblastoma: What's Wrong with the Current Attempts?

Abstract

Today, CAR-T therapy has been widely acknowledged as a "gold standard" treatment for certain hematologic diseases. There is a relatively small but enhancing body of clinical trials studying the effectiveness of CAR-T in treating glioblastoma, known as the most common and aggressive brain tumor in adults. Despite the promising findings, currently available data is still erratic. We aimed to overview the recent clinical attempts to apply CAR-T therapy as the treatment strategy for glioblastoma and highlight non-obvious problems occurring: flaws in the study design with suspicious inclusion criteria, absence of narrow nosologic focus, poor validation or even nonvalid imaging technologies and inconveniencing efficacy evaluation. We also discussed further upcoming advanced approaches for CAR-T cell manufacturing. We are convinced that our review could help to define the right place for CAR-T therapy in glioblastoma treatment strategy and would pave the way for future successful clinical trials.