A brief history of development of chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy research

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) is a molecular modifier, and T cells modified by CAR have the antibody sequence to recognize tumor antigens, and have a specific recognition and killing ability against tumors. Since 1990s, the research and development of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) immunotherapy have gone through nearly 30 years, including the first concept, design, basic research, animal experiments, clinical trials, etc.. From the first generation of CAR-T to the third and the fourth generation of CAR-T, the types of CAR-T are increasing and showing more and more advantages in the treatment of a variety of hematological malignant diseases. CAR-T immunotherapy has remarkable curative effect in the treatment of B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma (MM). It is considered as one of the most advanced gene therapies. This article intends to review the brief history of the development, optimization and improvement of CAR-T immunotherapy. Key words: Immunotherapy, adoptive; Leukemia, B-cell; Lymphoma, non-Hodgkin; Multiple myeloma; Relapse; Chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy