Designing Universal CAR-T cells

CAR-T cells are an innovative anti-tumor therapy where a patient's own T cells are removed from their body and retooled with a CAR receptor that targets a tumor antigen. When added back into the patient, the CAR-T cells attack tumor cells, leaving the patient healthy. However, this process can be long and expensive, delaying treatment as the CAR-T cells are growing in the lab. An alternative solution would be to have "universal" CAR-T cells, where T cells are taken from a donor, rather than the patient themselves. This would allow for the production of CAR-T cells that are ready for infusion into a patient immediately, removing the weeks-long process of capturing a patient's own T cells, adding the CAR, and putting them back into the patient. However, in order to make universal CAR-T cells, it is imperative to make sure that donor CAR-T cells are not killed by the recipient, and that CAR-T cells do not kill the recipient's cells (outside of the cancer). To do this, gene editing can be used to knock out key immunity genes in the CAR-T cells, such as MHC, TCR, and PD-1. This project is to create this universal CAR-T cell by designing the gene editing tools needed to knock out the three genes.