Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have emerged as breakthrough therapies in patients with refractory haematologic malignancies, and the highly encouraging clinical results have fuelled expectations of implementing these strategies in other cancer types. However, a similar success of CAR-T cell treatment has not yet been observed in solid tumours. Various factors, including the immunosuppressive nature of the tumour microenvironment, hinder CAR-T cell trafficking and infiltration into scarcely accessible tumour sites, and difficulties in identifying targetable antigens with optimal expression and a good toxicity profile, limiting CAR-T dose escalation, must be overcome to achieve success in the treatment of solid cancers (Comoli et al. 2019).
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