CAR T-Cell Therapy in Hematological Malignancies

Abstract

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells (CAR T-cells) are a promising therapeutic approach in treating hematological malignancies. CAR T-cells represent engineered autologous T-cells, expressing a synthetic CAR, targeting tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) independent of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) presentation. The most common target is CD19 on B-cells, predominantly used for the treatment of lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), leading to approval of five different CAR T-cell therapies for clinical application. Despite encouraging clinical results, treatment of other hematological malignancies such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains difficult. In this review, we focus especially on CAR T-cell application in different hematological malignancies as well as strategies for overcoming CAR T-cell dysfunction and increasing their efficacy.

Keywords: CAR T-cells; hematological malignancies; leukemia; lymphoma.

Figure 1

CAR T-cell therapy in clinical trials. The left pie chart shows the number (n) of CAR T-cell therapies in clinical trials categorized into solid cancers, others and hematological malignancies (n = 934). The hematological malignancies are further listed within the right pie chart (n = 722). Data taken from clinicaltrials.gov and filtered for each disease separately [13]. Search criterion was “CAR” and all hits were manually filtered for each category shown.