Pancreatic cancer: Hurdles in the engineering of CAR-based immunotherapies

Oncoimmunology. 2014 Jun 18:3:e29194. doi: 10.4161/onci.29194. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer remains largely an incurable disease necessitating the development of novel therapeutic approaches. Adoptive immunotherapy using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-transduced T cells represents an alternative treatment with curative potential. We present an overview of the engineering of novel CARs targeting prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA), implications for the development of immunotherapies, and potential strategies to circumvent on-target/off-tumor toxicities.

Keywords: PSCA; adoptive immunotherapy; chimeric antigen receptors (CAR); pancreatic cancer; synthetic biology.