Simulating the Evolution of Signaling Signatures during CART-Cell – Tumor Cell Interactions

Immunotherapies have been proven to have significant therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of cancer. The last decade has seen adoptive cell therapies, such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CART-cell) therapy, gain FDA approval against specific cancers. Additionally, there are numerous clinical trials ongoing investigating additional designs and targets. Nevertheless, despite the excitement and promising potential of CART-cell therapy, response rates to therapy vary greatly between studies, patients, and cancers. There remains an unmet need to develop computational frameworks that more accurately predict CART-cell function and clinical efficacy. Here we present a coarse-grained model simulated with logical rules that demonstrates the evolution of signaling signatures following the interaction between CART-cells and tumor cells and allows for in silico based prediction of CART-cell functionality prior to experimentation.