Recent Advances in Chimeric Antigen Receptor Technology

Dear Colleagues,

Immunotherapies play an increasingly important role as a therapeutic option for a broad spectrum of diseases, ranging from cancer to autoimmunity. The two main modulations can be summarized by antibody therapies or adoptive cell transfer. Here, the idea of using chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to produce modified cells is taking an increasingly important place. CARs recognize their antigen without the limitations of MHC II restriction.

Over the past decade, the continuous development of next-generation CARs has been outstanding. There are many options for CAR therapies. While the first trials started with cancer, autoimmunity was quickly added. Today, antifibrotic CAR therapies are also feasible. Additionally, the various possibilities in adapting CARs to their targets have been widely used. The target cells vary from T cells to regulatory T cells and natural killer cells. The ways of incorporating the genetic changes have been inventive, including transfection, retroviral or lentiviral transduction and CRISPR-Cas9. Signal transduction has been modified in first-, second- and third-generation CARs. Finally, TRUCKs and the idea of secreting effector cytokines was also introduced and realized. All these ideas and customized solutions are diverse and exciting. More and more patents are being applied for, clinical trials conducted, and products approved.

In this Special Issue, we would like to collect recent publications on the research results and knowledge related to CAR technology.

Dr. Matthias Hardtke-Wolenski
Guest Editor

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