2025/09/08 by Elliott J. Brea, Simon Baldacci, Neil Savage +33 · 1 voice
Engineering · Medicine · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #CAR-T cell therapy research #Nanowire Synthesis and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.1158/2326-6066.cir-25-0527
openalex publication_date 2025/09/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Antibody-based therapies have revolutionized cancer treatment but have several limitations. These include downregulation of the target antigen, mutation of the target epitope, and, in the case of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), resistance to the chemotherapy warhead. As TROP2-targeted therapy with ADCs yields responses in TROP2+ solid tumors, but the responses lack the durability observed with other immunotherapy-based approaches, we developed TROP2-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells as an alternative. The TROP2-directed CAR T cells showed high potency against multiple solid tumor models. Moreover, TROP2-directed CAR T-cell therapy preserved high potency in models of ADC resistance and could be further engineered to prevent cell therapy resistance. This was achieved by leveraging fully human single-domain (VH-only) binder discovery to rationally engineer dual epitope binding-based (biparatopic) CARs. This work highlights the potency of CAR T-cell therapies and how rational engineering leveraging dual-VH targeting domains can overcome resistance pathways to current therapies. In future work, the CAR engineering approaches presented here can serve as a platform to be partnered with other strategies to address the suppressive tumor microenvironment.