Car-NK cell therapy for overcoming solid tumors

Abstract

There are many standard treatments for solid tumors, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or combination therapy, but all of them are difficult to maintain long-term anti-cancer effects. Recent immunotherapies such as Car-T have achieved remarkable results in hematologic cancers. However, clinical success of immunotherapy for solid tumors remains difficult to achieve due to the specific nature of solid tumor microenvironment and impediments to drug delivery. NK cell therapies can be divided into two main types, those that directly use unmodified NK cells to kill cancer cells and CAR-NK cell therapies, which genetically engineer NK cells to bind to specific CAR structures, thereby increasing specificity and thus reducing damage to normal cells when NK cells target cancer cells. Therefore, researchers are currently focusing more on the second type of NK cell therapy. Compared with CAR-T cells, CAR-NK cells have benefit in significant immune rejection, more effectiveness in solid tumor.