Adoptive T-cell therapy recently achieved impressive efficacy in early phase trials, in particular in hematologic malignancies, strongly supporting the notion that the immune system can control cancer. A current strategy of favor is based on ex vivo-engineered patient T cells, which are redirected by a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and recognize a predefined target by an antibody-derived binding domain. Such CAR T cells can substantially reduce the tumor burden as long as the targeted antigen is present on the cancer cells. However, given the tremendous phenotypic diversity in solid tumor lesions, a reasonable number of cancer cells are not recognized by a given CAR, considerably reducing the therapeutic success. This article reviews a recently described strategy for overcoming this shortcoming of the CAR T-cell therapy by modulating the tumor stroma by a CAR T-cell-secreted transgenic cytokine like interleukin-12 (IL-12). The basic process is that CAR T cells, when activated by their CAR, deposit IL-12 in the targeted tumor lesion, which in turn attracts an innate immune cell response toward those cancer cells that are invisible to CAR T cells. Such TRUCKs, T cells redirected for universal cytokine-mediated killing, exhibited remarkable efficacy against solid tumors with diverse cancer cell phenotypes, suggesting their evaluation in clinical trials.
Keywords: IL-12; T cell; adoptive cell therapy; chimeric antigen receptor; inducible cytokine; innate immunity; stroma.
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.