Limitations and Overcomes of CAR-NK for Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract

Adoptive cell treatment utilising chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) immunotherapy is gaining remarkable breakthroughs. In solid tumours, CAR immunotherapy lags far behind. CAR T cell production, does not have tumor-specific antigens, and is not effective in CAR T cell infiltration and trafficking into tumour sites, therapy-associated toxicity, immunosuppressive TME, and antigen escape are among the primary obstacles for CAR immunotherapy in solid tumours. Compared to CAR T cells, CAR NK cells have a number of benefits, including the ability to be processed from preexisting cell lines with mismatched MHC, the ability to kill bad cells via CAR-independent and CAR-dependent pathway with less toxicity. One clinical study demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of CAR NK cell treatment. However, CAR NK cell therapy also has its drawbacks, including, low persistence, lack of transporting pathway, immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment, and low lentivirus transduction efficiency. Solving these issues are significantly important for this technology to be accepted in future use.