Advances and challenges in CAR-T cell-mediated immunotherapy.

Abstract

Immuno-oncology approaches involving engineered T cell-mediated immunotherapies have revolutionized anti-cancer clinical research in recent years. Among these, Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell-based therapies have taken center stage in the field of immuno-therapeutics. The strategy involves ex-vivo engineering of T cells with CAR molecules, whose external domains are designed to recognize tumor-expressed antigens. Following the infusion of engineered CAR-T cells in patients, upon antigen recognition the internal signaling events initiated from the remaining intracellular CAR domains result in the activation of T cells, and finally elimination of tumor cells take place. The key advantages of this immuno-therapy are the selective recognition of tumor antigens and the elimination of tumor cells by autol-ogous engineered T cells. In this special issue of International Reviews of Immunology , we present five comprehensive review articles that summarize key advances in basic and translational aspects of CAR-T cell research (Figure 1).