Although chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has shown potential in the treatment of haematological malignancies, its application in solid tumours is unsatisfactory owing to the harsh physical barriers and immunosuppressive microenvironment.
The ideal CAR T therapy requires a novel armoured CAR T cell engineered to navigate in the circulatory system, penetrate tumour tissues, and survive in the harsh tumour microenvironment to exert adequate immune effects.
Recently, a research team led by Prof. CAI Lintao from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a CAR T cell-based microrobot (M-CAR T) with magnetic-acoustic sequential actuation that can autonomously navigate to tumor sites for cell immunotherapy by decorating CAR T with immunomagnetic beads using click conjugation.
The study was published in Advanced Materials.
Based on immunomagnetic bead engineering, the M-CAR T demonstrated controllable anti-flow and obstacle avoidance movement and maintained an on-demand route under magnetic guidance.
Meanwhile, it exhibited distinctive, acoustic manipulative properties whereby it could exert CAR T cell control and could actively penetrate artificial tumour tissues under magnetic-acoustic sequential actuation.
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In animal models, M-CAR Ts with sequential actuation achieved long-distance targeting and accumulated at the peritumoral area under programmable magnetic guidance.
Subsequently, acoustic tweezers actuated M-CAR Ts to migrate into deep tumour tissues, resulting in a 6.6-fold increase in accumulated exogenous CD8+ CAR T cells compared with those with no actuation.
“Ingeniously, anti-CD3/CD28 immunomagnetic beads stimulate infiltrated CAR T proliferation and activation in situ, significantly enhancing their antitumour immune efficacies,” said Dr. PAN Hong, co-corresponding author of the study.
The M-CAR T maintains the bioactive properties of CAR T cells and is capable of magnetically propelled spatial targeting and acoustically actuated tumour penetration to cope with vascular anti-flow and obstacles to migrating into deep tumour.
After entering tumour tissues, immunomagnetic beads in situ stimulated CAR T cells to overcome immunosuppressive tumour environments through efficient expansion and activation.
“Such sequential actuation-guided cell microrobots combine the merits of autonomous targeting and penetration of intelligent robots with in-situ immunoactivation of T cells. It holds considerable promise for clinical precision immunotherapies of solid cancer,” said Dr. PAN.
Source: Chinese Academy of Science Headquarters
