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. 2023 Jul 2;3(4):20210058.
doi: 10.1002/EXP.20210058. eCollection 2023 Aug.

Adoptive cell therapy for cancer treatment

Shi Du  1   2 , Jingyue Yan  1   2 , Yonger Xue  1   2 , Yichen Zhong  1   2 , Yizhou Dong  1   2
Affiliations

Adoptive cell therapy for cancer treatment

Shi Du et al. Exploration (Beijing). .

Abstract

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is a rapidly growing anti-cancer strategy that has shown promise in treating various cancer types. The concept of ACT involves activating patients' own immune cells ex vivo and then transferring them back to the patients to recognize and eliminate cancer cells. Currently, the commonly used ACT includes tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), genetically engineered immune cells, and dendritic cells (DCs) vaccines. With the advancement of cell culture and genetic engineering techniques, ACT has been used in clinics to treat malignant hematological diseases and many new ACT-based regimens are in different stages of clinical trials. Here, representative ACT approaches are introduced and the opportunities and challenges for clinical translation of ACT are discussed.

Keywords: T‐cell receptors; adoptive cell therapy; cancer immunotherapy; chimeric antigen receptors; dendritic cells; macrophages; natural killer cells; tumor‐infiltrating lymphocytes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Yizhou Dong is a scientific advisory board member of Oncorus Inc, Arbor Biotechnologies, and FL85. Other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Illustration of adoptive cell therapy (ACT). Immune cells can either be collected from patients' excised tumors or peripheral blood. These cells are isolated, expanded, and modified to be given back into the hosts to exert anti‐tumor activity. Figure created using Biorender.com.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Diverse ACT platforms. ACTs mainly include Tumor‐infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, T‐cell receptor (TCR) therapy, Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell/NK cell/macrophage therapy, and Dendritic cell (DC) therapy. Figure created using Biorender.com.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The evolution of CARs. The first generation contains CD3ζ as a stimulatory domain for T cell activation. The second‐generation and third‐generation CARs include one or multiple costimulatory domains. The fourth‐generation CARs can indelibly produce specific cytokines such as IL‐12 or IL‐2 driven by the nuclear factor of activated T‐cells (NFAT). The fifth‐generation CARs integrate an IL‐2Rβ domain which can induce antigen‐dependent activation based on JAK‐STAT pathway. Figure created using Biorender.com.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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