Application and progress of CAR therapy on malignances: from CAR-T to CAR-NK

For some malignances that are highly aggressive and metastatic are usually considered incurable. However, with the advent of immunotherapy, this therapy could be possibly effective after other three major therapies: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. As an emerging immunotherapy, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have been applied to treat hematologic malignances and some patients achieved long-term remission and temporary cure. However, CAR-T cells also bring side effects such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS), neurotoxicity, etc. Moreover, CAR-T cells did not perform well in solid tumors, for the reason that CAR-T cells are difficult to break through external barrier of solid tumors, at the same time maintain cytotoxicity and persistence inside. Therefore, we introduce CAR-NK cells therapy on the basis of CAR-T cells. At present all CAR-NK cell therapies are in clinical trials, its effectiveness has been initially observed. Compared with CAR-T cells, patients with hematologic malignances received CAR-NK cell therapies showed few side effects such as CRS and neurotoxicity.