Scientists Unveil Ideal Design for Solid Tumor Therapy

UCLA researchers identify best chimeric antigen receptor for engineered immune cells to treat solid tumors

Published on Feb. 4, 2026

Got story updates? Submit your updates here. ›

A UCLA research team has identified the best design for a promising new type of immunotherapy that could be mass-produced to treat multiple solid tumors. The study focused on engineered invariant natural killer T cells, or NKT cells, and systematically compared four targeting systems, called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, that direct these cells to attack cancer.

Why it matters

CAR-T cell therapies have revolutionized treatment for certain blood cancers, but these successes haven't extended to solid tumors, which make up the vast majority of cancers. CAR-NKT cells offer key advantages for overcoming the obstacles of solid tumors, but a key question remained: Which CAR design would work best? This study removes a major roadblock in advancing CAR-NKT cell therapies toward clinical application.

The details

The research team engineered human blood stem cells to produce specialized immune cells called NKT cells and equipped them with four different versions of a cancer-targeting CAR system. They tested the engineered cells in the laboratory against tumor cells and in mouse models of ovarian cancer. The 4-1BB-containing CAR design emerged as superior, demonstrating the strongest anti-tumor activity and persistence.

  • The study was published in the journal Blood Immunology & Cellular Therapy.

The players

Lili Yang

A professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

UCLA

The university where the research was conducted.

Got photos? Submit your photos here. ›

What they’re saying

“By rigorously identifying the optimal CAR design for NKT cells, our findings provide a roadmap for advancing CAR-NKT cell therapies from the lab toward clinical trials.”

— Lili Yang (Blood Immunology & Cellular Therapy)

What’s next

The team has demonstrated CAR-NKT cell therapy's effectiveness against pancreatic cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and ovarian cancer in separate preclinical studies, paving the way for future clinical trials.

The takeaway

This novel therapy's off-the-shelf potential could transform cancer treatment, as CAR-NKT cells can be mass-produced from donated blood stem cells, frozen and stored at hospitals for immediate use, unlike current CAR-T cell therapies that require collecting and modifying each patient's immune cells.