CAR-T Medicines for The Treatment of Cancer, Part 2
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Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) is a gene therapy designed to harness the potency of antibodies and T-lymphocytes into one single medicine for the treatment of cancer. CAR-T therapy could be viewed as a “living anti-cancer drug” as the medicine itself consists of a living cell, which is genetically engineered as a pharmaceutical “chimera” to find and destroy cancer cells. The term chimera describes a monstrous being from Greek mythology composed from different animal parts. It appears in literature as a creature with two heads: a lion’s and a goat’s (see Figure 1 below). Like the creature from Greek mythology, a CAR-T medicine also has two heads: antibody binding domain and T-cell receptor (TCR) signaling domain.
Figure 1: According to Greek mythology, a Chimera was a hybrid with
parts from different animals. It consisted of a lion with a goat’s head and a
tail ending in snakes’ heads. In the Homer’s Iliad, a chimera is described as a
“fearsome beast snorting out the breath of terrible flame of bright fire”.
Source
– Chimera, Greek Mythology, www.mythortruth.com
In
science, the term chimera is often used to describe hybrids from different
species, such as a virus with DNA sequences from different species, or a CAR-T
drug construct consisting of an antibody fused to a T lymphocyte, combining the
medical potency of an anti-cancer antibody with the cancer killing properties
of a T lymphocyte. (read Part 1 of the CAR-T
article series here)