Synthetic biology approaches for improving the specificity and efficacy of cancer immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has shown robust efficacy in treating a broad spectrum of hematological and solid cancers. Despite the transformative impact of immunotherapy on cancer treatment, several outstanding challenges remain. These challenges include on-target off-tumor toxicity, systemic toxicity, and the co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cellular & molecular immunology 2024-05, Vol.21 (5), p.436-447
Main Authors: Zhu, Bo, Yin, Hang, Zhang, Di, Zhang, Meiling, Chao, Xiaojuan, Scimeca, Luca, Wu, Ming-Ru
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/250/24
631/250/251
692/4028/67/580
Antibodies
Antigen (tumor-associated)
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cancer
Cancer immunotherapy
Cancer therapies
Immunology
Immunotherapy
Medical Microbiology
Microbiology
Review
Review Article
Surface antigens
Synthetic biology
Toxicity
Tumors
Vaccine
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Immunotherapy has shown robust efficacy in treating a broad spectrum of hematological and solid cancers. Despite the transformative impact of immunotherapy on cancer treatment, several outstanding challenges remain. These challenges include on-target off-tumor toxicity, systemic toxicity, and the complexity of achieving potent and sustainable therapeutic efficacy. Synthetic biology has emerged as a promising approach to overcome these obstacles, offering innovative tools for engineering living cells with customized functions. This review provides an overview of the current landscape and future prospects of cancer immunotherapy, particularly emphasizing the role of synthetic biology in augmenting its specificity, controllability, and efficacy. We delineate and discuss two principal synthetic biology strategies: those targeting tumor surface antigens with engineered immune cells and those detecting intratumoral disease signatures with engineered gene circuits. This review concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the enduring challenges in cancer immunotherapy and the potential breakthroughs that synthetic biology may contribute to the field.
ISSN:2042-0226
1672-7681
2042-0226
DOI:10.1038/s41423-024-01153-x