CAR T-cell immunotherapy: a powerful weapon for fighting hematological B-cell malignancies

Abstract

The current standard of care in hematological malignancies has brought considerable clinical benefits to patients. However, important bottlenecks still limit optimal achievements following a current medical practice. The genetic complexity of the diseases and the heterogeneity of tumor clones cause difficulty in ensuring long-term efficacy of conventional treatments for most hematological disorders. Consequently, new treatment strategies are necessary to improve clinical outcomes. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) immunotherapy opens a new path for targeted therapy of hematological malignancies. In this review, through a representative case study, we summarize the current experience of CAR T-cell therapy, the management of common side effects, the causative mechanisms of therapy resistance, and new strategies to improve the efficacy of CAR T-cell therapy.

Keywords

CAR T cells / hematological malignancies / review

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, the Double First-Class Project (No. WF510162602) from the Ministry of Education, the Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Program on Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research (No. 2019CXJQ01), the Overseas Expertise Introduction Project for Discipline Innovation (111 Project; No. B17029), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82070227, 81861148030, 81670147, and 81970189), Clinical Research Plan of SHDC (No. SHDC2020CR2066B), the Shanghai Major Project for Clinical Medicine (No. 2017ZZ01002), the Innovative Research Team of High-level Local Universities in Shanghai, National Science and Technology Major Project (No. 2019ZX09301139).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Jianqing Mi, Jie Xu, Jianfeng Zhou, Weili Zhao, Zhu Chen, J. Joseph Melenhorst , and Saijuan Chen involved in this review writing declare that they have no financial conflicts of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not contain research protocols requiring approval by the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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