E-Book 3rd Congress

  • Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered immune cell therapy in hematological malignancies: CAR T, CAR NK, and CAR macrophage
  • Batol Abbasi,1,*
    1. Tabriz University of Medical Sciences


  • Introduction: For many years, cancer treatment methods are usually chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy. Despite these methods helping to cure the disease, most diseases have a poor prognosis. In recent years, there have been new advances in cell therapy with the production of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that destroy cancer cells. CARs are recombinant receptors that have been engineered so that immune cells can target and destroy specific antigens on the surface of cancer cells. Recently, researchers have been able to treat hematological malignancies through CAR-T cell. However, significant toxicity and limitations of CAR-T cell immunotherapy have led researchers to turn their attention to other immune cells as potential candidates for CAR engineering. Consequently, recently researchers have considered the use of CAR-Macrophage and CAR-NK cell therapy as a new therapeutic option for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. This review will describe recent advances in the engineering of CAR immune cells and their application in the therapy of hematologic malignancies.
  • Methods: Review
  • Results: Review
  • Conclusion: In the last four decades, CAR immune cell-based cancer therapy has become an advanced treatment for suppressing malignant cells. Nowadays, CAR-T have been very effective in the treatment of cancer, especially hematological malignancies. In addition to T cells, NK cells also suppress malignant cells as the main component of the innate immune system. CAR-NK cells are more useful in the treatment of hematologic malignancies because they can identify and destroy malignant cells more effectively. The factors that make CAR-NK cells superior to CAR-T cells in immunotherapy include:1) They can be obtained from allogeneic donors, 2) The probability of graft-versus-host disease and cytokine release syndrome in patients is low, 3) They can be modified and increase their proliferation and survival in vivo. Also, in addition to CAR-T and CAR-NK, CAR-Ms have anti-tumor activity. The benefits of using CAR-M immunotherapy include the following: 1) They have little toxicity, 2) It can significantly penetrate tumor tissues, 3) They can effectively phagocytose malignant cells, present antigens to T cells, and increase their killing by T cells.
  • Keywords: Immunotherapy,Chimeric antigen receptors, CAR T-cell, CAR-NK cell, CAR-M, Hematological malignancies