CAR T cell technology provides the foundation for established immunotherapies against certain types of blood cancer and holds great promise for the fight against many solid tumours too.

One major drawback of conventional CAR T cell technology, which relies on a single target antigen, is the lack of tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) that are truly specific for cancer cells.

This means that the cytotoxic CAR T cells not only kill the tumour but also damage healthy tissue. One way to improve the specificity is using a combination of TAAs expressed on the tumour but not on healthy cells.

In this webinar, Dr. Christoph Herbel presents a newly developed workflow to identify new tumour markers using an unbiased high-throughput, flow cytometry–based screening and multiparameter imaging. To assess the safety profile of potential CAR targets, Dr. Herbel’s team analysed the marker expression across many healthy human tissues using high-content imaging on the MACSima™ Imaging Platform. They identified novel marker combinations for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, glioblastoma, and ovarian carcinoma as candidates for combinatorial CAR T cell therapy.

Using Adapter CAR™ Technology, they tested the functionality of the novel target candidates for ovarian cancer in vitro – with intriguing results.