Combination of CAR‑T cell therapy and radiotherapy: Opportunities and challenges in solid tumors (Review)

Abstract

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has emerged as a new and breakthrough cancer immunotherapy. Although CAR‑T cell therapy has made significant progress clinically in patients with refractory or drug‑resistant hema‑ tological malignancies, there are numerous challenges in its application to solid tumor therapy, including antigen escape, severe toxic reactions, abnormal vascularization, tumor hypoxia, insufficient infiltration of CAR‑T cells and immuno‑ suppression. As a conventional mode of anti‑tumor therapy, radiotherapy has shown promising effects in combination with CAR‑T cell therapy by enhancing the specific immunity of endogenous target antigens, which promoted the infiltration and expansion of CAR‑T cells and improved the hypoxic tumor microenvironment. This review focuses on the obstacles to the application of CAR‑T technology in solid tumor therapy, the potential opportunities and challenges of combined radio‑ therapy and CAR‑T cell therapy, and the review of recent literature to evaluate the best combination for the treatment of solid tumors.