Engineering Strategies to Enhance TCR-Based Adoptive T Cell Therapy

Overview

Journal Cells

Publisher MDPI

Specialties Biochemistry
Biophysics
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2020 Jun 24

PMID 32570906

Citations 39

Authors

Jan A Rath

Caroline Arber

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

T cell receptor (TCR)-based adoptive T cell therapies (ACT) hold great promise for the treatment of cancer, as TCRs can cover a broad range of target antigens. Here we summarize basic, translational and clinical results that provide insight into the challenges and opportunities of TCR-based ACT. We review the characteristics of target antigens and conventional αβ-TCRs, and provide a summary of published clinical trials with TCR-transgenic T cell therapies. We discuss how synthetic biology and innovative engineering strategies are poised to provide solutions for overcoming current limitations, that include functional avidity, MHC restriction, and most importantly, the tumor microenvironment. We also highlight the impact of precision genome editing on the next iteration of TCR-transgenic T cell therapies, and the discovery of novel immune engineering targets. We are convinced that some of these innovations will enable the field to move TCR gene therapy to the next level.

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