Moving receptor redirected adoptive cell therapy toward fine tuning of antitumor responses

Abstract

Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) is emerging as a powerful modality of cancer treatment. While ACT has proved able to induce massive clinical responses, genetic modification of T lymphocytes further improved clinical responses obtained. One of the major current limitations of ACT is the inability to discern healthy from malignant cells, leading to on target/off tumor responses that can limit its application. We here discuss some of the approaches currently under development and potential solutions to circumvent these limitations and extend this potentially curative therapy to different tumors by targeting a variety of antigens.

Keywords: adoptive cell therapy; cancer; chimeric antigen receptor; gene therapy; immuno- therapy; off-target; tumor antigen.