CAR T-cell immunotherapy has been rapidly developing over the last 2 decades. The expanding list of cancer targets provides more and more treatment opportunities. The purpose of this research review is to discuss CAR T-cell immunotherapy, to compare and contrast this therapy to the gold standards of cancer treatment, and to examine its developing use for solid tumor cancers.Targeted immunotherapies, such as CAR T-cells, are a more recent addition to the treatment options for solid tumor cancers. While initially developed for use with hematologic malignancies, CAR T-cells have now successfully been used to treat a variety of solid tumor cancers (National Cancer Institute, 2022). The use of CAR T-cell immunotherapy for solid tumors is promising, with about 30 antigens being targeted in ongoing clinical trials (Newick et al., 2016). The current opportunities for treatment include lung cancer, kidney cancer, bone cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and glioblastoma (Guzman et al., 2023). The use of CAR T-cell immunotherapy for solid tumor cancers faces obstacles such as cell trafficking restrictions into the tumor site, a hostile tumor microenvironment, antigen heterogeneity, CAR T-cell exhaustion, and potential severe toxicities that can hamper clinical efficacy. With new and ongoing research of potential antigen targets and the development of counter strategies, such as combination therapies and additional modification of the CAR T-cells, being tested, there still significant potential therapeutic efficacy for the use of CAR T-cell immunotherapy for solid tumor cancers.
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