Dr. Papa on Challenges of CAR T-Cell Therapy in Head and Neck Cancer

Sophie Papa, PhD, MBBS, MRCP, King’s College London in the United Kingdom, discusses chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for patients with head and neck cancer.

There are big challenges around taking this technology into solid tumors, explains Papa. One of the key challenges is the difficulty of finding something to target on a solid tumor that is only found on the tumor cells and is not found in normal tissue.

CD-19, which is the target CAR T cells have been particularly successful against, is not a tumor restricted antigen, so we have to think of different approach’s that enable us to take this technology safely to this patient population, states Papa.