Tumour escape from CAR-T cells

Abstract

Over the past decade, CAR-T cells have emerged as one of the most powerful cellular immune therapy approaches in the battle against haematological malignancies. Nonetheless, similar to other immunotherapeutic approaches, tumour cells develop strategies to evade CAR-T cell therapy, often with the support of a highly immunosuppressive and protective tumour microenvironment. To date, antigen loss, immune dysfunction, exhaustion and (microenvironment-mediated) upregulation of antiapoptotic pathways have been identified as major modes of tumour escape from CAR-T cell therapy. This chapter will focus on our current understanding of these modes of immune escape from CAR-T cells.