CELL INTELLIGENCE · 肿瘤细胞治疗研究

Despite substantial developments in conventional treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy, and molecular-targeted therapy, breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancer mortality in women.

Currently, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-redirected immune cell therapy has emerged as an innovative immunotherapeutic approach to ameliorate survival rates of breast cancer patients by eliciting cytotoxic activity against cognate tumour-associated antigens expressing tumour cells. As a crucial component of adaptive immunity, T cells and NK cells, as the central innate immune cells, are two types of pivotal candidates for CAR engineering in treating solid malignancies.

However, the biological distinctions between NK cells- and T cells lead to differences in cancer immunotherapy outcomes.

Likewise, optimal breast cancer removal via CAR-redirected immune cells requires detecting safe target antigens, improving CAR structure for ideal immune cell functions, promoting CAR-redirected immune cells filtration to the tumour microenvironment (TME), and increasing the ability of these engineered cells to persist and retain within the immunosuppressive TME. This review provides a concise overview of breast cancer pathogenesis and its hostile TME.

We focus on the CAR-T and CAR-NK cells and discuss their significant differences.

Finally, we deliver a summary based on recent advancements in the therapeutic capability of CAR-T and CAR-NK cells in treating breast cancer.