The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a number of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. Due to the nature of CAR T cells as “living drugs”, they display a unique toxicity profile. As CAR T-cell therapy is extending towards multiple diseases and being broadly employed in hematology and oncology, being able to reliably predict treatment efficacy and a quantification of responses are of high relevance. Furthermore, for continued breakthroughs, novel CAR designs are needed. This includes different antigenbinding domains such as antigen-ligand binding partners and variable lymphocyte receptors (1). Now, after amazing advances for treating blook cancers, CAR T cell therapy is showing promise for solid tumors.
In general, identifying T cells that kill cancer cells in vivo is critical to the development of successful cell therapies. The label-free AtlaZ immune cell killing assay can be used to measure rate of killing at Effector:Target (E:T) ratios to predict in vivo activity. In order to gain a deeper understanding of cancer cells, real-time and continuous monitoring is necessary to access kinetic and phenotypic information. Such monitoring captures also unique toxicity profiles of CAR T cells.