TCR-T immunotherapy for the treatment of solid tumor: current status, challenges and future prospects

Abstract

Engineered T cell receptor-T cell (TCR-T) therapy and chimeric antigen receptor-T cell (CAR-T) therapy are currently the two most effective ways of adoptive T cell therapy. Because CAR can only recognize antigens on the surface of tumors, CAR-T therapy has not yet had satisfactory results in the treatment of solid tumors. TCR can not only recognize tumor surface antigens, but also intracellular antigens. Thus TCR-T therapy has shown unprecedented promise in the treatment of solid tumors, and has become an extremely attractive treatment modality. This review described the differences between TCR-T therapy and CAR-T therapy in recognizing cancer antigens, the clinical targets and different types of tumor antigens targeted by current TCR-T therapy, the clinical development status of TCR-T antitumor therapy, and discussed the criteria for preclinical evaluation of TCR titer and the advantages, limitations and possible effective countermeasures of current TCR-T therapy. Finally, we reviewed the current status of TCR-T therapy and some of the challenges, emphasized the importance of targeting tumor-specific antigens, and outlined neoantigen-specific TCR-T treatment strategies combining checkpoint blockage therapy and oncolytic viruses, which we expect will significantly improve cancer immunotherapy and provide some clues for future TCR-T therapy to eradicate multiple types of cancer.

Keywords

• |engineered t cell receptor-t cell|immunotherapy|solid tumors|tumor antigens|chimeric antigens receptor-t cell