Cancer Cell· 2025Q1· Review
Engineered natural killer cells for cancer therapy
- 53citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2025year
Short summary
CAR-NK cells, engineered from allogeneic donors, show safety and efficacy in early trials for relapsed/refractory lymphoid cancers, with ongoing research targeting solid tumors via gene editing.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Allogeneic CAR-NK cells offer a promising, scalable, off-the-shelf platform for cancer treatment.
- Early clinical trials show remarkable safety and encouraging efficacy in lymphoid malignancies.
- Precision gene editing is being used to enhance NK cell function and resistance to immunosuppression for solid tumor applications.
- High-throughput discovery platforms are identifying gene targets for multi-engineered CAR-NK cells.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell immunotherapy is emerging as a promising and scalable, off-the-shelf platform for treating relapsed and refractory cancers. Early-phase clinical trials have demonstrated remarkable safety and encouraging therapeutic efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cells in heavily pretreated patients with lymphoid malignancies. Current efforts are expanding these therapies to solid tumors, with translational research increasingly leveraging precision gene editing to enhance effector function, persistence, and resistance to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. In this review, we summarize findings from early-phase clinical trials and discuss emerging synthetic biology and engineering approaches to improve NK cell potency. We also highlight advances in high-throughput discovery platforms that have identified actionable gene targets for NK cell reprogramming, offering a path to design multi-engineered CAR-NK cells to overcome the challenges of solid tumors. Together, these translational innovations define the trajectory of next-generation NK cell therapies and their integration into the broader cancer immunotherapy landscape.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Cancer Cell, 2025 · DOI ↗
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ImmunologyImmunology and Microbiology