Singapore, April 1 -- Approved CAR T-cell therapies have shown remarkable results in patients with certain types of blood cancers. However, further innovations are needed before the technology can reach its full potential. In principle, CAR T-cell therapies work because they are engineered with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that is designed to recognise a cancer antigen expressed on the surface of that patient's cancer cells. When the CAR T-cell therapy is administered to the patient, these CAR T-cells coordinate a targeted immune response against the patient's cancer.

Ideally, the antigen for a traditional CAR T-cell (or a T-cell) would be universally and homogeneously expressed on cancer cells, but never expressed on healthy cells....