Surgery with the assistance of conventional radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy is the basis for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) treatment. However, with these treatment modalities, the recurrence and metastasis of tumors remain at a high level. Increasingly, the evidence indicates an excellent anti-tumor effect of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells in hematological malignancy treatment, and this novel immunotherapy has attracted researchers' attention in HNSCC treatment. Although several clinical trials have been conducted, the weak anti-tumor effect and the side effects of CAR-T cell therapy against HNSCC are barriers to clinical translation. The limited choices of targeting proteins, the barriers of CAR-T cell infiltration into targeted tumors and short survival time in vivo should be solved. In this review, we introduce barriers of CAR-T cell therapy in HNSCC. The limitations and current promising strategies to overcome barriers in solid tumors, as well as the applications for HNSCC treatment, are covered. The perspectives of CAR-T cell therapy in future HNSCC treatment are also discussed.
Keywords: CAR-T cell; HNSCC; cancer therapy; immunotherapy; solid tumor.