Science Spotlight: CAR tyrosine kinases, disrupting SWI/SNF for lung cancer, and more

An NIH team reported a new method to enhance the antitumor activity of CAR T cells by replacing their T cell receptor ζ chain with a tyrosine kinase domain.

The TCRζ chains in CAR constructs recruit downstream signaling molecules required for T cell activation. But because TCRζ chains aren’t perfectly efficient, the NIH team hypothesized that the chains set a threshold for T cell activation that could be avoided by replacing them with elements of the downstream effectors themselves, such as domains from tyrosine kinases...