Generation and Functional Verification of Hypoxia-Sensitive Chimeric Antigen Receptor-T Cells

Our research primarily focuses on cancer immunotherapy, particularly in CAR T-cell-based immunotherapy. We have been exploring novel strategies during last 10 years to enable CAR T-cells to specifically target a tumor with minimizing the side effect or even no side effect at all. Novel strategy have been persistently explored to improve the safety and efficacy of the CAR T-cell-based immunotherapy, in particularly by targeting tumor microenvironment, such as hypoxia-conditioned CAR, as exemplified in this protocol.

Interestingly, recent study demonstrated that hypoxia-condition CAR T not only greatly improved the safety profile, but also reduced the CAR T exhaustion and enhanced the efficacy in solid tumors. Hypoxia is a characteristic feature of tumor microenvironment. Our research aims to help researchers in the field of cancer immunotherapy understand the concept of hypoxia-sensitive CAR T-cells, their construction and how to establish hypoxia models for evaluation.

Our laboratory will continue exploring new strategies for constructing CAR T-cells to enhance their tumor-curing efficacy, safety profile and cost effectiveness.