Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Immunotherapy

Engineered T cells for all

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 17, pages 206–207 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

Qasim et al. used transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) to engineer human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-mismatched donor T cells to produce universal CART19 cells. The donor T cells were transduced with lentivirus to express CAR-CD19 and they were engineered by electroporation with TALENs to ablate CD52 and T cell receptor (TCR)-α constant region (TRAC). CD52 was disrupted so the cells could evade and survive alemtuzumab (which targets CD52), which is used as a conditioning therapy before therapeutic stem cell transplantation (SCT). TRAC was ablated to prevent TCRα–TCRβ expression so as to minimize the risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which is a concern when using HLA-unmatched cell transplants. These universal CART19 (UCART19) cells were also engineered to express a CD20 epitope so they could be cleared by treatment with rituximab in situations of adverse effects.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

  1. Qasim, W. et al. Molecular remission of infant B-ALL after infusion of universal TALEN gene-edited CAR T cells. Sci. Transl Med. 9, eaaj2013 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Gemma K. Alderton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Alderton, G. Engineered T cells for all. Nat Rev Cancer 17, 206–207 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc.2017.19

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc.2017.19

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma.

Get what matters in translational research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Translational Research