chimeric antigen receptor tagged posts

Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs): (a) anatomy and evolution of CAR design, and (b) CAR T cells recognize specific antigens on cancer cell surface and trigger T-cell–mediated killing.

Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings uncover facets of CAR immunobiology and underscore the potential of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to advance immunotherapies for cancer.

CRISPR is a genome-editing tool that enables scientists to cut and manipulate a cell’s DNA with high precision. In the Nature paper, MSK investigators show that CRISPR technology can deliver the CAR gene to a very specific location in the genome of the T cell...

This is a schematic of how a “chimeric autoantibody receptor,” or CAAR, that displays fragments of the autoantigen Dsg3 helps fight an autoimmune disease called pemphigus vulgaris, a condition in which a patient’s own immune cells attack Dsg3, which normally adheres skin cells. Credit: Christoph T. Ellebrecht, MD, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Preclinical study shows that engineered T cells can selectively target the antibody-producing cells that cause autoimmune disease. The autoimmune disease the team studied is pemphigus vulgaris (PV), a condition in which a patient’s own immune cells attack a protein called desmoglein-3 (Dsg3) that normally adheres skin cells...