Advances in Promoting the Efficacy of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells in the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide. Its insidious onset, rapid disease progression, and poor prognosis make it difficult to treat. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, a popular treatment in recent years, has demonstrated unsatisfactory results compared with treatment of patients with lymphoma and hematologic cancers. This review examines and discusses studies focused on enhancing the efficacy of CAR-T cells in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma in the past five years and aims to serve as a reference for the study of CAR-T cells and promote the development of CAR-T cells in the clinical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. ABSTRACT: HCC, one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide, develops from hepatocytes and accounts for more than 90% of primary liver cancers. The current widely used treatment modalities are far from meeting the needs of liver cancer patients. CAR-T cell therapy, which has recently emerged, has shown promising efficacy in lymphoma and hematologic cancers, but there are still many challenges to overcome in its application to the clinical treatment of HCC, including osmotic barriers, the inhibition of hepatocellular carcinoma microenvironment activity, the limited survival and killing ability of CAR-T cells, and inevitable side effects, among others. As a result, a number of studies have begun to address the suboptimal efficacy of CAR-T cells in HCC, and many of these schemes hold good promise. This review focuses on advances in the past five years aimed at promoting the efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy for treatment of HCC.