Engineering T cells with hypoxia-inducible chimeric antigen receptor (HiCAR) for selective tumor killing

Chimeric antigen receptor-modified T cells (CAR-T cells) have shown good effects in the treatment of hematologic cancers; however, they may cause on-target off-tumor toxicity because of minimal expression of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) on normal tissues, particularly in the context of treating solid tumors. Hypoxia is a common hallmark of solid tumors because of the Warburg effect. To minimize side effects, we designed a hypoxia-inducible CAR (HiCAR), which is driven by a hypoxia response element (HRE), and consists of a conventional CAR and an oxygen-dependent degradation domain (ODD) that is actively degraded under normoxia but stabilized under hypoxia. HiCAR-T cells showed enhanced cytotoxicity against tumor cells under hypoxia compared to normoxia in vitro and antitumor efficacy comparable to that of conventional CAR-T cells in vivo. Overall, our study demonstrates the potential of the HiCAR for improving the safety of CAR-T cells to promote the clinical application of CAR-T immunotherapy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s40364-020-00238-9.